Pitching to Guindy Alumni Angels

In the past four years, I have been participating, volunteering, and leading investment efforts with Guindy Alumni Angels (GAA). GAA is a collection of alumni members from the College of Engineering, Guindy, a 225+ year old institution in Chennai, India. We are engineers, managers, startup enthusiasts, founders, and investors.

Guindy Alumni Angels (GAA) has seen 1000s of pitches in the past 3 years. We met with 100s
of founders and invested in more than two dozen deals. Based on our experience here are
some of the important items that stood out in the pitch decks and pitches.

Investment Information

GAA has invested in seed and series A rounds. Often the investments were made alongside
other angel or institutional investors when the lead is already in place. GAA is often not the first
check in any of the companies. Nor is it the last group to invest in a round. GAA invests
collectively as a group. The GAA investment checks have ranged in size from $30K to $200K.

GAA also has invested in follow-on rounds with the some of the companies. GAA prioritizes investing
in areas that we understand as well as likely rich in engineering and software complexity. GAA
often also advises, connects, and helps founders with the network. The angel members make
individual decisions to invest and pool the funds. GAA does not invest unless there is a total of $50K commits received collectively from all interested members. Should the total commit exceed $50K, then the companies will receive a single check from Guindy Alumni Angels LLC.

Pitch Guidelines

We invite Startup founders to register and submit their funding request at GAA Get Funded page. Once submitted, please send the link to one of the Guindy Angels people to prepare for screening. Typically each company that we intend to pursue after the initial pitch will have a GAA member assigned as the lead for the company. This lead member will help the founders to prepare, schedule, and pitch to the group.

GAA provides a 30-minute slot for the first pitch. We recommend that the founder present the
main information within 15-minutes allowing for 15-minutes of Q&A. Sometimes there may be
additional time available to go into details. Please come prepared to inform and answer questions during the pitch.

Pitch Deck Guidelines

A pitch deck exists to provide good and qualified offline information for the GAA members to
understand more about the problems, solutions, team, traction, and finance. As such here are
some elements preferred in the pitch deck. There may be 1-3 slides per item listed below.

1. Problem Statements – what is the problem and why it is to be solved now?
2. Solution – outline. As engineers we tend to dig in, still do not use too many slides.
   Product demonstrations are useful, but sometimes these eat up too much time and
   distract us in the first meeting.
3. Market – What is the size of the market
4. Traction – Who are the customers, what is the sales and revenue so far. List the
   revenues in US $ for monthly and annual basis
5. Team – who is leading the effort and why they are the right fit for the solving the problem.
   Show more information about founders and founding team.
6. Competition – who are other players in the market and how do you differentiate your
   solution efforts
7. Finance – Revenues, Expenses, Burn rate, Funding so far, Valuation and terms for this
   new round, cap table summary, etc.
8. Product Demonstration – quick and illustrative demonstration of the product. Where applicable, please provide access to the demonstration separately.

Thanks for the interest in Guindy Alumni Angels. Best wishes for your startup founding and funding journey.

PS: you can also look at how to Assess a Startup with simple and powerful steps for more details.