From trying too hard to over-impress to not trying to impress at all, it is sad – almost shameful indeed – that many intending entrepreneurs have no idea what it takes to pitch business ideas to an intending investor properly.

I learned that an investor recently offered to invest 40 million naira in various small businesses via his social media handle. He asked his followers to send their business pitches to him. Trust me; you don’t want to see the quality of the business pitches he received.

It is the one-minute debate we used to have back in schools where you tried to convince the audience to agree with your point of view in a 1-minute presentation. It occurred then that these youths could do with some help what a business pitch should look like. I mean, you don’t need to attend a business school to be able to pitch.

I have recently done a live session on LinkedIn on how to pitch, so if you are an entrepreneur, you can also take a look. In the meantime, I would like to share a few tips to keep in mind when you next want to do a business pitch.

Could you tell your business story?

Every business idea or startup idea has a story behind it. For Ola Orekunrin Brown of Flying Doctors Nigeria, her business idea could be traced to the point that she lost her sister because there was no available aircraft to transport her to where quality medical service was available.

For Piggyvest, it was the story of how a woman saved N1,000 every day in her local piggybank and only had N365,000 at the end of the year. No rewards or interest in developing and maintaining a savings culture.

I can go on and on, but I will stop here. Every business idea was inspired by an experience, the need to solve a problem, or a personal burden to make life easier for others. Please make sure to tell your own story in your pitch.

Know your numbers

It is okay that you are out to solve a problem and have beautifully narrated the story behind it. But how does this translate into profit? Unless you want to start a non-profit organization, there has to be a way your product or services will bring in money to sustain the business.

Knowing your numbers means that you should be able to tell a potential investor that every N100,000 invested in production or service delivery will deliver about N30,000 in profits every month for the first five months and N50,000 in profits for seven months after.

Do you happen to remember our earlier article on feasibility study? It will come in handy here.

Know your USP

I have earlier published an article on competitive advantage (aka USP), so I need not dive much into this. You can read more in my previous article. Please tell the investor why you think you are in the best position to solve the problem and whether customers will be willing to pay for the solution you bring to the table. Please tell the investor what you’ll be offering that is different from what is available in the market already.

Timing is key

Keep it Short and Simple (KISS). It always feels like there is so much to say, but please try to figure out this information as quickly as possible and quickly. Try capturing all of this information for practice in 60 seconds or less.

If you start right, you will get the investor’s attention, but you will have to conclude before it gets too long and begins to bore your listeners. Remember what they say about taking a bow when the ovation is loudest?

Demonstrate some business acumen

While you want your listeners / potential investors to know that you are professional in the field where you want to solve a problem, you also need them to see that you possess business acumen. Why? You may need to be a professional to solve a problem in a field, but you need business acumen to do a successful business. Business acumen is a whole discussion, so watch out for it.

My advice: Watch any of the Dragons Den series you can lay hands on and see practical pitches so that you can learn from the successful angles and also see what the other guys did wrong. I’ll be waiting in the comment section to know what you think. Do you have other tips for intending entrepreneurs?

Hope you voted Snoop Dogg for Twitter CEO!!!. Now that the other main poll has noted that Musk should go (I do not support that as it would be a mistake), many contenders are out there competing for who will take care of the helpless blue bird. As Elon Musk reviews their resumes including Dogg’s who is certainly looking like a frontrunner (lol), I want to wish Musk good luck for this important UN-level assignment. 

Seriously, I believe that only Musk has the capacity and owner-power to fix Twitter, if we expect the business to become financially valuable to shareholders. But to be a loss-making community square, there are many people who can run that business. Like the day the founder of Uber left, I noted that Uber will have lost years, not because the next CEO will not be great, but because he would be very cautious to pioneer new vistas which made Uber initially successful. In other words, Uber going forward would be boring!

Yes, the fact is that some decisions in companies undergoing massive changes are better done by founders, or owners, as they can make tough decisions and get away with them. Like today’s Meta (Facebook parent), only Mark Zuckerberg can get many things fixed because everyone will get the message that he founded this business. The same applies to Twitter; here, the owner holds the ace. Someone has to be annoyed that Twitter is not making money, and make tough decisions to get it back to flying as a healthy bird.

Snoop Dogg can sing for this bird but he certainly cannot take care of it; Musk, you may have a Member of Board here. He can help turn that place into a haven for y’all- let’s party.

One poll and many things could be on the line: “On Sunday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk conducted a poll asking Twitter users if they want him to continue running the social media platform. Majority of responders (57.5%) voted for him to step down.” Since Elon Musk began the voyage and ended up bailing out Twitter shareholders with $44 billion, his popular company, Tesla, has lost close to $700 billion on the market cap.

Of course Musk can get out of this poll and redo it with the Blue checkers: “Twitter Inc. will restrict voting on major policy decisions to paying Twitter Blue subscribers, company owner Elon Musk said in one of his first tweets following a poll calling for him to step down. Responding to a Blue member going by the name Unfiltered Boss, Musk agreed with the suggestion that only subscribers should have a voice in future policy and said, “Twitter will make that change.” A day earlier, the billionaire chief pledged to submit all future policy decisions to a vote and offered Twitter users a choice on leadership, asking them if he should step down.”

Comment on Feed

Comment 1: I wonder what motivated Musk in the first place to risk asking if people would want him to be the CEO of Twitter or not. In this crazy world, people are looking for bosses that are more friendly even when the company is collapsing rather than someone who can grow the empire irrespective of what it takes because their only stake is just to use what is available.

Musk must remember that this business was acquired with billions of dollars and if it goes under, he will always take the blame and not the people. In my opinion, I would ask him to reconsider his position and do what’s best for the company except he has KPIs that will flush out any non-performing CEO.

My Response: Good point indeed. He is toying with $billions as though the world does not have needs. I mean, that is more than what Nigeria spends in a year for 220 million people. I hope he stays so that we can have things to write about! Yes, if he goes, Twitter will begin to die. Who really writes about Uber these days? You like founders and owners as they bring attitudes.

Comment 2: Prof… I agree, even though I have found it difficult to convince my friends, that Musk is the man to fix Twitter. It is a mistake to sentimentally vote him out.

Comment 3: Haba which way are you leaning, sir? Yesterday, you were in support of Musk stepping down as CEO because he was hurting Tesla, you even cited the case of the Google founders.

My Response: Read that piece well. I did not say he should step down. Musk can run Twitter without being visible…like the Google founders. My point is this: if you want to run a consumer business, you do not need to become a visible target. That is not to say he should step down.

The House of Representatives has moved to legalize cryptocurrency in Nigeria, more than a year after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) prohibited financial institutions from carrying out transactions relating to the digital asset.

This was made known to Punch Newspaper on Saturday by the Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Capital Markets and Institutions, Babangida Ibrahim. He said the change will come when the Investments and Securities Act, 2007 (Amendment) Bill, which will allow the Securities and Exchange Commission to recognize cryptocurrency and other digital assets as capital for investment, is passed and signed into law.

The aim is to change the rules for the Nigerian capital market to be in par with global best practices. One of the bills was named ‘A Bill for an Act to Repeal the Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers Act, Cap. C9, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, and Provide for the Establishment of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments; and for Related Matters.’

“We need an efficient and vibrant capital market in Nigeria. For us to do that, we have to be up to date with global practices. In recent time, there are a lot of changes within the capital market, especially with the introduction of digital currencies, commodity exchanges and so many other things that are essential, that need to be captured in the new Act,” Ibrahim said.

The house committee chairman, who submitted reports on proposals to overhaul the capital market on Wednesday, said there is a need for a new legislation that will regulate the entire crypto industry.

He said that the much needed regulation is not within the purview of the CBN due to its decentralized system, adding that cryptocurrency is not illegal in Nigeria; it only does not have any law backing it up.

“All these are some of the issues that we have considered we have to regulate them. It is not that they are illegal but we don’t have regulation for them. So, these are some of the reasons why we need to review the Act and put some regulations for most of the activities – derivatives, commodity exchanges, digital currencies and so many other things,” he said.

The central bank’s decision to prohibit cryptocurrency transactions within regulated financial institutions was a huge setback to the growth of digital assets in Nigeria. The West African country was among the leaders in cryptocurrency trade before the CBN’s directive, which forced Nigerian traders to P2P channels, significantly reducing their trade volume.

The CBN governor Godwin Emefiele further directed commercial banks to close accounts used for crypto transactions. But the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had earlier given approval for crypto transactions before the CBN struck, overriding the SEC’s stance.

Analysts believe that the contradicting development happened because there’s no law defining the dos and don’ts of the Nigerian digital market. Although in January, the bill seeking to repeal the Investment and Securities Act 2007 and to enact the Investments and Securities Act, 2021 passed its second reading at the House of Representatives, it is yet to become law.

Early this month, finance minister Zainab Ahmed announced that the federal government, under digital tax, plans to tax cryptocurrency and other digital assets in line with the provision of the 2022 Finance Bill. This means that Nigeria’s cryptocurrency industry and other digital assets will need to be legalized.

Depending on your business, have the right social media strategy. If your mission involves selling professional services and intellectual things, choose the right social media, preferably LinkedIn. Increasingly, the most important feature in digital product business is having many users. And if you can get those users largely free, amazing things will happen. How can you get 100 visitors from LinkedIn to your website in a week? If you do that, you have saved $500+.

LinkedIn is a place where you can convert users to paying customers when people come to your site. But getting those users to come without spending truckloads of $dollar could be important to your bottomline. If your business is about entertainment and the product is what you post, Facebook/YouTube wins. But if your post is to take your customers to the product, it changes the equation.

I have run many matrices, and can conclude that, in our business, 10 users in LinkedIn are far more valuable than 100 users in Twitter and 50 in Facebook, on our ability to convert visitors to paying customers. I left Twitter because it was a waste of time; many shows, no action.  I am also hoping that Facebook improves to avoid me leaving it. But LinkedIn outperforms as when that visitor arrives, there is a chance the digits will hit the bank. That is why all our materials (size, colour, etc) are designed with a LinkedIn-first strategy.

What is your social media playbook? You need to look at data to know where to invest your efforts. Facebook could be better if your post is the product (eg entertainment). Twitter is hopelessly non-monetizable from a user perspective, from my experience.

Remember: the most important feature for that online product is that you have users! That is what they call network-effect phenomenon where a positive continuum of wins triggers a virtuoso circle of many good things resulting in more good things. 

The key is finding that first win – and once you do, other wins will come. In the Igbo Nation, it takes the killing of a leopard (just one to be called “ogbuagu”) to be called a “killer of leopards”. Kill that first “leopard” with a great social media playbook. #strategy

Comment on Feed

Comment 1: Cheap products (<20$ ) sell best on Facebook/Insta. Commodities sell best there. As soon as a product is differentiated, one must change a platform and LI works better .

My Response: I tend to think that it is not the price. Female wig, especially the Brazilian type, does well on Facebook and Instagram. That can cost $200 or more.  I think it is the audience and the state of mind of people. It may be strange trying that product here. I still think that Jumia will be doing better without Facebook; many things are sold there. But they are not intellectual or knowledge in nature; LinkedIn wins that category.

[on different platforms not working] That is why all of them exist -serves different customers. But it seems you are a user and not a merchant (my target for this post). You can learn from all the platforms. My post was for those who have products to sell and how to execute a winning strategy.

Comment 2: I would be surprised if your data shows otherwise, Facebook is just a large pool of comedy lovers. Someone on my contact list asked me to help her business via data analytics, she wants to be able to see the effect of her social media marketing. I gave her metrics to track, surprisingly, even cake baking had most converts from Instagram (61% in value) and (83% in count) Facebook ranked below Twitter. I told her to stop paying for ads, yet Facebook gets the highest likes and comments 

Plot source: brandwatch