How To Make Your Business Investable With Troy Henikoff

In this episode, I'm talking with Troy Henikoff. This episode is about making your business investable, from finding investors to closing the deal with the perfect pitch.

Troy is the managing director of MATH Venture Partners, which happens to be one of Trainual's investors. He sits on the Trainual board of directors and he's been a great friend, advisor and mentor for us over the last few years. So, we get into the story of how we built Trainual, how we met, and Troy's background before we ever intersected. He was a serial entrepreneur, one of the founders of SurePayroll, which is the first online payroll company in the U.S. and he teaches entrepreneurship over at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business. He's on the board of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center and the board of a bunch of other companies that he's invested in over the years.

So, what I love about this episode, if you have ever considered raising money, raising venture capital for your business, this is the hour of content to listen to. We packed so much into this conversation about whether or not your business can grow at the trajectory to be investable, about what you should do to formulate your pitch and make sure you've got the right metrics to be investible by an investor, about the types of investors you should look for. Should they be active? Should they be passive? How frequently should we be checking in with these people? And then why would you raise money and what is it supposed to do in your business?

So from start to finish, we talked about Troy's journey getting into investing, and then we broke down the details of how you can do this for your business. So, this is a great episode to share with anyone that's interested in raising money for their business, and if you are growing a company that could take investment, please listen to this.

Quote of The Episode:

"We're investing in your tomorrow. And so my recommendation is to spend 20% of your time talking about the problem, 20% of your time talking about the solution, and 60% of your time talking about the thing the investor's buying, which is your future. It's literally that simple of a formula." - Troy Henikoff

‍Topics Covered:

• Troy's entrepreneurial background. (5:44)
• Building SurePayroll. (13:08)
• How Troy got into investing. (16:34)
• Successful businesses have this in common. (19:42)
• The best investor pitch. (27:04)
• Passive vs. active investors. (30:34)
• What investors are looking for in a business. (36:12)
• Sell the investor on where you'll be tomorrow. (39:09)
• What not to do in a pitch. (41:15)
• The investor owner relationship. (43:49)

Resources:

• Follow Troy Henikoff on LinkedIn.
• Follow Troy Henikoff on Instagram.
• Investing and venture capital resources from MATH Venture Partners.