Recently, IESE recently held an event at workshop in which students and alumni presented their projects to investors. The entrepreneurs had 15 minutes to present their business projects to potential investors, who then decided which ones (if any) they might be interested in investing in. This was followed by a brief question-and-answer session.

Fifteen minutes may not seem like much time, but when the ideas are clear, it is more than enough. You can quickly see if an entrepreneur is clear about the business concept, the analysis of competitors and the market, how to position their products or services, what their strengths will be, how they will be organized, the main numbers and their rationale. In other words, you can see if he knows the business and has a good plan. You can also see if he/she is a person with communication skills, empathy and skill to convince. Knowing how to explain the concepts core topic quickly is not within everyone's reach, nor is it possible in any project. If this is poorly or poorly defined or if the entrepreneur does not have clear ideas, he/she will fail. And even more so in the face of investors who are experts in seeing many business ideas, both good and bad.

It is not easy, moreover, to be brief when you have a lot of information and have spent many hours analyzing it. You have to know how to extract the essential, which is what will lead demanding customers to buy your products and not those of skill. It is the same as with a journalistic article : being brief is much more difficult than being long-winded.

The difference between a business that works and one that doesn't depends on a lot of things. The essential part of the plan is quickly explained. I remember that as a student, while I was doing a presentation -I thought it was brilliant, because I had prepared it a lot-, the teacher said: "But, what is the fundamental idea?" I had not known how to transmit the keys to the business.

Investors also look to the team. They are the ones who have to steer the ship in a changing environment and of which - no matter how much planning is done - little is known at the beginning. Who in a business has managed to fulfill the initial plan to the letter? Along with the business idea, the entrepreneur must explain well the benefits of the team. As an investor, I like to see teams and not individuals among entrepreneurs, people with initiative but who also complement each other? And that they also look for partners, not only for capital, but also for good traveling companions, under the premise -which some forget- that no one can know everything. After all, companies are a group of people in search of a common goal. In them, therefore, the partners must contribute value and, to this end, they must be made participants not only in potential profit expectations but also in a business project . And all this, of course, in fifteen minutes.