You may have great traction or a novel idea but startup investors are always investing in the team first. They care most about the people who are going to grow the business from this point on. Here's why:
1. Team Always Matters
Even legendary companies can be laid low by weak executives and employees. For example, Apple's innovation has nosedived since the loss of Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, they have almost completely missed the boat on AI.
2. Outlier Evidence
It takes outlier ability to build a unicorn, investors want to see evidence that you're one of those people. The Team slide is the easiest place to provide the long list of reasons why you're special.
3. Relationship Reinforcement
Investors like teams with strong bonds so the team slide is an opportunity to understand how long you've known each other and worked together, especially given investors will only meet a small subset of your team.
Best of luck out there.
Sterling Road invests in idea stage and pre-seed B2B startups based in the US, Canada and UK.
