Why Every Business Needs Investment Funding
Every business starts the same way: with an idea and a bank account. You can fund it yourself (that’s called equity), or you can offer equity to someone else who’s willing to take the leap with you.
Think of your business as a catapult. You’ve built the frame but without tension, it’s just sitting there. Investment is that tension. It’s what sends you airborne.
Now, let’s talk about what investors are actually looking for in 2025, and how to make them believe you’re worth betting on.
A Note: The Usual Suspect
Venture firms this year are neck-deep in AI pitches. Everyone’s “redefining,” “automating,” or “revolutionizing” something.
If you’re playing in that space, differentiation is oxygen. Investors are hunting for originality and market insight.
Do your homework. Study who’s raising, how they’re positioning themselves, and what’s missing from the story. Then fill that gap with something real.
This is what I usually do when I see AI startups today and can immediately tell if they’ll get funded or not. When I share the info with founders, they feel discouraged to see someone with a similar idea already raised funds while they haven’t even built their pitch deck. Stop right there if you feel the same. A market with a few competitors is not bad, it’s validation. Virgin markets are harder to sell to investors because there’s no proof of demand.
You might not be the first, but if you try, you might end up being the best.
The Problem
At the pre-seed stage, you might not have an MVP or a dime in revenue. That’s fine, no one expects you to. What they do expect is proof that the problem you’re solving actually exists, and that people care enough to pay for the solution.
Your mission: quantify the pain. Validate it through conversations, surveys, and real evidence. Many pitches skip the hard proof and rely on personal anecdotes, please don’t. Quantify it, and you’re already ahead of 60 percent of the crowd.
Strong market validation beats flashy slides every time. At House of Hōma, I help founders build research-backed business cases that tell investors one simple truth: it’s a gap in the market.
The Wide Moat
Warren Buffett called it a “wide moat”, that invisible force field protecting your business from hungry competitors.
It might be patented tech, proprietary data, or simply a team so good no one else can copy your execution. Whatever it is, make it unmistakably clear. A great moat story makes everyone else look outdated. But it's not enough. Without the least piece of puzzle.
The Team
At pre-seed, it's all you and your co-founders.
Even if it’s your first rodeo, you can earn confidence by showing you’re coachable, resilient, and deadly serious about building a world-class team.
And great teams expand the moat until everyone else is swimming for their lives. Now you have everything it takes to land the funds.
Conclusion
Now that you know what investors want, the next step is telling your story like it deserves to be heard. Through a powerful pitch deck.
A good deck informs. A great deck persuades. It’s strategy, story, and design working in perfect sync to turn your business into something investors feel before they even open the data room.
“No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.” Daniel Kahneman