You’re certain that your business idea has the potential to change the world. At least, it seems that way in your mind. Now you just need to convince an investor to give you some money.

When you’re talking to potential investors, they each have their own way of figuring out whether to invest: whether your idea really will change the world, or if it’ll fizzle out and flop.

Having built and sold several startups , and now as CEO of SeedLegals, I’ve seen thousands of pitches and met countless investors. In my experience, investors can be grouped into one of five different personality types.

When you know what type of investor you’re dealing with, you can adjust how you tell the story of your business to best demonstrate your venture’s value and better engage your new potential investor.

Here, in no particular order, are the five types of investors you’ll meet and what they’ll want to see in your pitch:

1. The SEIS seeker

This investor personality type is unique to the UK and could also be called the ‘Gimme my SEIS/EIS’ type (although there might be equivalents in other countries). If you’re a founder in the UK, you’ll know about SEIS and EIS tax incentives and the financial appeal these hold to certain investors.

This investor won’t be all that emotionally invested in your project — they’re interested in the kind of tax breaks they can get if they invest in your company. If you encounter this investor type, make sure you’ve got your Advance Assurance and say so prominently in your pitch.

2. The Spreadsheet Scrutiniser

This investor is going to unpick your business plan and scrutinize your figures. Like SEIS investors, they’re not too fussed about what you’re actually doing or how you’re changing the world, they’re more interested in your traction, numbers, and revenue. From the minute you encounter The Spreadsheet Scrutiniser, they’ll be analyzing your potential for growth.

This investor might give themselves away when they want to show off that they’re a spreadsheet expert and/or they sprinkle their emails or conversation with terms like CAC (customer acquisition cost) or LTV (lifetime value). They’ll ask why your business plan is only three years and not five, why you haven’t included dividends, how you’ll allocate your funds, and so on.

When you encounter this type of investor, prepare for a grilling. You’re talking to a numbers person, so make sure your numbers stack up.

If your company aims to save the planet and isn’t focused on making much money in the process, any conversations you have with a Spreadsheet Scrutiniser will be short. Instead, to look for an investor whose priorities align with yours, which could be the next personality type…

3. The Philanthropist

This investor is the polar opposite of the Spreadsheet Guru. Ridding the oceans of plastics, helping to end poverty, creating world peace — whatever your mission might be, for this investor, it isn’t about your company making money, it’s about doing something positive for the planet.

This investor might be independently wealthy or they might simply want to do good with their money — either way, the story you present to this investor needs to highlight how you’re creating positive change by doing something socially or environmentally conscious.

The borders with this personality type can be fuzzy: some Philanthropists will value the positive change element of your business more highly than whether or not you’re making money, whereas for others it does all come down to the bottom line.

Generally, when you’re in the initial stages of finding investors, it will be clear whether the investor is mission-driven or growth-driven. You can then tailor your pitch to appeal to their priorities.

4. The Hobbyist

This investor might not be too familiar with the startup community or perhaps they’re a little older than most investors, well established in their career with some capital to invest. The Hobbyist isn’t overly concerned with making a huge return on their investment — for them, investing is an engaging pastime.

The Hobbyist is unlikely to want to invest a huge amount and in a way, you could consider them like a lone crowdfunder: they want to be associated with an exciting company as an early investor, without having to invest a fortune or take on much responsibility.

For this investor, you can adjust your pitch to emphasize how exciting and innovative your idea is, and make sure they feel swept along with your energy and enthusiasm. Often they’re not bothered about your company hitting unicorn status, they simply enjoy feeling that they’re a part of a new and innovative venture.

5. The Aspiring Founder

A big clue that you’re dealing with an Aspiring Founder is that they have a highly-paid job doing something very different from the startup ecosystem. The big difference between the Hobbyist and the Aspiring Founder is that deep down, this type would love to be a founder themselves but they’re not quite ready to take on the risk or give up the day job. Instead, they’ll use your company to try out life at a startup by proxy.

The Aspiring Founder can be a passionate investor, opening doors for you and making helpful introductions. But this personality type can drive founders mad with unsolicited feedback or a constant stream of suggestions. Their eager and well-intentioned support can cross the line to become overbearing.

To maintain a good relationship with this investor, set clear boundaries early on. When you’re clear from the start about where roles and responsibilities lie and how you’ll work together, you’ll channel the Aspiring Founder’s energy and attention to genuinely benefit your business.

How to find your best match

When you recognize your investor’s personality type, you’ll better understand which aspects of your company story will be most appealing to them. Even before you meet investors, it’s helpful to look objectively at your business model and goals to work out which investor personality type or types will be the best fit for your company.

Often founders discover that having a mix of different investor personality types can benefit your company in the long term because they each require you to pay attention to a different aspect of running a business.

Finding the right investor is a bit like dating: you’ll want to find a personality that works well with yours, someone who understands and shares your aspirations, and ultimately someone you can see yourself committing to and spending a lot of time with. Does the investor you’ve met feel like a natural fit for your business? If so, congratulations, you can build on that chemistry to form a strong founder-investor relationship.

If you’re still looking for investors, take a step back to assess your company’s identity, strengths, weaknesses, and goals. Then get out there and meet investors. Listen carefully to their feedback, work out which personality type they are (secretly of course), and adjust your pitches to match.

And just like dating, don’t give up if you don’t find ‘The One’ straight away — you just haven’t met them yet.

Zoom etiquette: Yes, it’s OK to mute your face

We’re now years into this great experiment in remote work. It started off as a Zoom , but now it feels more like a plod. Our work lives are lived on camera all day, every day—and it’s time to let people take a break.

Face-muting is ok

Communicating remotely isn’t new. For ages, we corresponded by mail. Then we added telegraphs, which increased the speed of communication. Then came telephones, which allowed us to communicate beyond cables. Fax, email, instant message—the communication options continued to grow.

We didn’t see each other’s faces, yet business still thrived.

Video calls are great for a lot of things, like screen sharing and picking up on non-verbal cues. But it doesn’t mean we always have to stare each other in the face. Because, let’s be honest, it’s exhausting.

We all know it’s ok to mute . But I want to make it clear that it’s just as ok to face-mute—to turn your camera off—especially in certain situations.

When eating. On days when I’m slammed with back-to-back meetings, I often eat during calls. To avoid turning the meeting into a mukbang session, I turn off audio and video.

When multitasking. Not all parts of all meetings I’m at are relevant to me. If folks are talking about something that doesn’t pertain to me, I use that time for busywork, like checking Slack. I don’t face-mute to hide my multitasking—it’s a good use of time—but if I had my video on, it’d be noticeable and distracting to others to see me doing something else.

In large group meetings. If no one’s going to see you anyway, feel free to give yourself a break, so you don’t have to worry if people noticed the weird way you itched your ear.

When you don’t have your game face on. We’re not camera-ready 100% of the time. While time-shifting to accommodate time zones, I’ve popped into 5 a meetings. I’m not getting up at 4:45 a to get my game face on, and believe me, you don’t want to see my face at that hour.

And there’s one more big one: face-mute whenever you feel like it.

How to encourage people not to face-mute

Yes, it’s ok—and sometimes important—to keep your camera off during a video call. But it’s also nice to see people’s faces sometimes, and the visual aspect of synchronous communication has obvious benefits.

Instead of issuing a hard edict, you can encourage attendees to show their faces by implementing a few strategies.

Have an agenda and share it ahead of time. It lets those who are multitasking know when something will be relevant to them. Instead of defaulting to camera-off the whole time, they can turn their camera on when it’s a pertinent agenda item.

Keep things concise. It’s easier to put your game face on if it’s a shorter meeting, and people might be more open to camera-on for 15 minutes than 45. Don’t schedule a one-hour meeting just because it’s the calendar default.

Ask engaging questions or use breakout rooms for small group discussions. People are more likely to show their faces if they’re actually participating.

Don’t record the meeting unless it’s really necessary. Being on camera all day is tiring enough. Knowing that it’s going to be recorded and live forever in the bowels of Skynet—uh, the internet—adds another layer of pressure. If a recording is necessary, add timestamps so people can easily skip to relevant sections, and enable closed captions and/or transcripts so people can get the context without staring at everyone’s recorded faces. As an added bonus, it’ll make your meetings more accessible.

I concede that meetings are sometimes (I repeat—sometimes!) necessary, but you can decrease the burden of being camera-on all the time. It may not be a full zoom anymore, but see if you can at least turn that plod into an amble.

This article by Michelle S. was first published on the Zapier blog. Find the original post here .

Ditching dropouts: Why advanced degrees are en vogue again

Startups are in a state of flux. Once ruled by college dropouts, Silicon Valley is starting to mature. It’s banished beer kegs and ping pong tables for codes of conduct and sensitivity training.

Shifts in the Valley don’t happen in a vacuum. Around the world we’re seeing companies ditch the fraternal order in favor of the more mature, steady hand of a qualified C-suite. A college degree, once seen as optional, is now anything but. Of the Fortune 500 tech companies , none feature a (non-founding) CEO that dropped out of college. Of the 38 companies on the list, 22 of them have a CEO with a Master’s degree or higher.

The trend is an obvious one. Academics, who once saw the tenure path at colleges and universities as their primary option, are beginning to branch out. And the business world is benefiting.

A 2019 study by the University of Melbourne and the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute notes: “with the steep rise in PhD graduations in recent years, and growing demand within the private and public sectors for innovative capability, universities are no longer the only career option.”

The freewheeling 2000s have given way to a new generation that, perhaps ironically, happened to be the old generation — that where credentials and education were valued more than headline-grabbing antics. Globalization brought a diverse workforce that fueled immense growth, growth that slowed and then began to crumble even the sturdiest startups were forced to rethink their culture. It’s here that everything began to change.

The academics have arrived

It makes sense. Skills possessed by those with advanced degrees such as PhDs translate well to the business world. Curiosity and forward-thinking are required; each has spent years not only brainstorming new ideas, but acting on them, defending them, and looking for ways to refine them.

They’ve spent a great part of their adult lives moving seamlessly between success and failure, learning how to survive and thrive at both sides of the spectrum. They’ve faced adversity, learned to work in groups that challenged them, and lived to tell the story. They’ve faced harsh criticism and developed unmatched resiliency.

In the business world, the ability to study, learn, and apply — not just memorize and recite — is an important one. The ability to improvise, to adapt, and to workshop solutions cannot be overstated. Academics spend years on these pursuits. They fuel curiosities and nurture critical ways of thinking that drive innovation. When focused, this energy leads to creative new solutions, to growth, and to profits.

The current generation of highly educated entrepreneurs will contribute on an entirely new plane, one that rejects antiquated notions that concepts and processes that brought success will be responsible for maintaining or building up on it. Today’s academics aren’t eccentrics in smoking jackets, but battle tested prodigies ready to face new challenges head-on.

New era requires new solutions

Further, businesses need highly qualified, educated individuals now more than ever. Prior to the dot-com bubble, startups needed little more than a few lines of HTML and a catchy domain.

In the 2000s, we saw CEOs — tech CEOs in particular — reach a sort of rockstar status that arguably set the entire space back years. And in the 2010s, we were left to clean up the mess of obsessive short-term thinking while dealing with increased scrutiny from both the public and the regulators who would begin roping in a space that had spun out of control.

The 2020s are the next wave in the startup era. It’s a time when the breakneck pace will slow somewhat, leaving time to scrutinize how we got here and what comes next.

One thing is clear: businesses can no longer operate as they have during the last decade-plus. And if we are to move forward, it’s going to be on the backs of those well-equipped to handle the challenges faced by the businesses of today — those who see the bigger picture and not only focus on tunnel-vision short-term thinking.

You could do worse than seeing the potential of those who have tasted and achieved greatness before they ever entered the business world.