The Key Ingredients for a Great Startup Pitch with Nilima Achwal

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Today we have Nilima Achwal on the podcast. She is the founder of the Female Founders Lab. This is a startup accelerator that helps female and male founders access what she calls a “goddess energy.” This energy is essential when navigating the complex and challenging world of getting funding as a startup. She has a tremendous amount of international experience in this world and now works with many leading founders in acquiring the funding they need to carry their vision to the masses.

We are going to be talking about some of the key ingredients needed to acquire that funding and enroll venture capitalists into your startup. This is an excellent episode even if you have never had a start-up before, or never had a startup before. Having this level of vision can be very powerful and have a dramatic impact on the results you experience in your business and in your life. This is a very useful episode for everyone so that we can learn from startup founders on the cutting edge right now.

We discuss:

[03:16] Nilima shares two of her defining moments.
[05:04] She realized at that moment in the mine that fear wasn’t real and that it was completely under her control.
[05:54] In 2011, she moved to India to understand how people build and scale world-changing ventures on the ground.
[08:31] She shares the story about her transformative pitch for sex education in India.
[10:25] Goddess leadership is letting yourself be a vessel for your idea to move through you and your vision to be birthed through you and staying strong and holding the container for what wants to be birthed in that process.
[11:21] Goddess leadership is about putting the feminine energy first. Everyone has feminine and masculine energy in us.
[12:50] The number one issue in the startup ecosystem is that there are a lot of huge egos and a lot of people giving advice. It is extremely hard for a first-time founder to be able to discern what is useful feedback and what is not.
[14:04] The most important ability that you need to hone as a founder is your skill of discernment.
[16:12] You have a 10-12 slide investor deck. You want to be able to showcase the big industry problem and how your solution plays into it.
[19:18] You can not get rocked up or down based on if one person said it was a good idea or not.
[22:36] Our systems are crumbling. Many industries are going through a radical transformation.
[25:15] How do you paint the potential for something that hasn’t happened yet? It is by showing what is happening in the industry and the multi-layered rippling value that is going to be created.
[25:48] As long as the shift is happening in the industries, the possibilities are endless. It is so important to lead with the industry transformation.
[27:06] If you have this vision and live this vision, it is going to inspire your team members and clients.
[30:06] Stepping into this vision and claiming this is one of the most sure-fire ways to bring out and bring forward those limiting beliefs and roadblocks.
[33:44] A lot of healing happens as a result of that choice.
[36:06] If you have a vision or something that you feel can help people in the world, there is no mistake. You have been chosen to carry this out. You have the unique skills and the lived experience in your body that wants to be shared with the rest of the world. The world really needs you.