This is a slide we all know we need to have in our pitch deck to investors but does not have enough meat to talk about. We all make pitches and one of the slides I have seen entrepreneurs get lost or fumble through uncomfortably is the "Exit Strategy” slide. We all know the traditional exit options (IPO, acquisition by bigger company or good old royalties/revenue share options). Don’t the investors also also know these options? So why do they even expect entrepreneur to put it in the presentation? And then this deeply divided opinion that should this even be discussed or is it even valid at an early seed stage investment - a point for discussion some other time!

In my view, this slide demonstrates to the investor that you are actually thinking of how the investor will make a return on their investment and not just about your startup growth. The biggest mistakes are to just put “Get acquired by Google, Microsoft or Facebook” kind of one line with no backup data or research! That’s just being pure lazy. Try and research which large companies have acquired your kind of companies in the last three years.

Have at least three examples of such acquisitions ready to talk about in Q&A post pitching. If that’s not available, then find out large well funded companies (in India like Paytm, Flipkart etc) that are pretty active in your target segment and for whom it would make a great business extension by acquiring your company.

For example Paytm and so many other new payment banks being active in payments and FinTech space but not yet covering the niche you are focusing on and may want to expand into in next 2-3 years once your niche segment has grown.

The biggest turn off for investors and a blunder when discussing exit strategy is to proudly announce “We don’t want to sell our company for next 10+ years!!”.

The best stance to take is that you understand the exit options, have researched about them and would prefer to build a strong, viable and scalable company but if the right opportunity comes along that gives great returns to investors and other shareholders, you will be open to looking at them.