- What problem (or want) are you solving?
- What kinds of people, groups, or organizations have that problem? How many are there, where are they, what do they do about it now?
- How are you different?
- Who will you compete with? How are they different?
- How will you make money?
- How will you make money for your investors?
- How fast can you grow your business? Can you scale up volume without proportional scaling up headcount?
- What’s proprietary? What are you going to do to defend that?
- What traction have you made?
- What milestones have you met?
- How are you going to get the word out?
- How are you going to close sales?
- How are you going to get started?
- How are you going to spend investors’ money?
- What makes your team suited for this business?
- How did you come up with this idea?
- Why did you decide to (some marketing, product, or financial decision in the pitch)?
- What about (some objection related to market, competition, financial plans)?
- Who are your investors so far?
- How strong is your patent/idea/product?
- Could you grow faster with more money?
- Do you realize you’re vastly underestimating your marketing expenses (or sales expense, or margins through channels, or headcount required for direct selling)?
- Do you know comparable numbers for similar businesses?
- Why don’t you do this yourself? (Meaning, why do you think you need investors?)
- What sales have you made so far?
- Have you actually talked to those companies?
- Who else is interested?
- Who else have you shown this to?
- How did you come up with that valuation?
- Why would anybody want this?