If I don't have a co-founder but have a minimum viable product, how do I get investors interested in my idea and eventually my company?

First, congrats on getting to MVP stage!

Second, since you have a minimum viable product - what you need at the moment isn't investors or cofounders - it's users!

I'll strongly urge you to spend your time getting your product in front of your target users, and gathering feedback diligently.

Validating your MVP with users will be a requisite step in attracting investor attention - rare is the startup that can raise funds without some user level traction, even rarer still is the startup that nails its product without user feedback and sails happily to market.

Gain some momentum and some learnings by getting your product into the hands of your users, your need for funding may be eliminated, or change drastically as you start to steer based on real market conditions and not intuition.

I am as solo founder and successfully raised three Angel rounds.It can be done.

Investors want a list of attributes to properly litigate their risk involved for first time entrepreneurs. Namely, you need to demonstrate you are sharp, expert in your field, have 'skin in the game', a cleary focus, understand market and contingincies. If you don't have a team, be honest and transparent that the funds can be utilized to outsource extra help.

What I recommend are the following suggestions
-Have a beautifully designed pitch deck
- Basic mockup website
- Social content following
-Master your presentation skills

If you have a proof of concept have solid numbers, google analytics/trends of your market share and competitors in a business plan start scheduling meetings. I can send you two links of a pitch deck I used to raise 40k and a video I frequently use as a reference to what angels look .

Firstly, you don't need a co-founder but it's highly recommended, investors on the whole will trust a team of co-founders more than a single founder. The reason is that statistically co-founding teams are much more successful than single founder teams. Why bet on a company, even with a great idea, that has less chance of being successful.

Having said that you can find investors who will bet on you, it's just a case of kissing lots of frogs.

If you have an MVP, you need to use it to validate your assumptions. That does not mean that you need to get 100,000 users on board. You need enough users to show average usage. I'm not a statistician but depending on your customer base your sample of users could be 10 (B2B - enterprise) to 10k B2C mass market.

Proof points would be:

* stickiness - how often the come back and use it
* conversion to sales
* NPS - would they recommend the product / service to a friend?
* there will be lots of other specific qualitative and quantitate proofs that will be specific to your product

It should not take you long to put this together in a presentable form and take it to investors.

Happy to help you further on a call, including working out specific KPIs or proof points.

We would all like to think, "If I build it they will come." But this is not necessarily true. 100 years ago, if you build a better mouse trap investors would beat a path to your doorsteps. But not now. What you need to do is mount a two prong marketing campaign aimed your target user audience or clients and also at your investors. Use language like, "Select Investors invited to Inquire." Not the exact words, but you get the point. Don't beg if you have a MVP.

Best of Luck,
Mike
From the Trenches to the Towers Marketing