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Below are the different ways I've noticed to convince VCs to invest in your company, in descending order of desirability. It seems the higher you can get in this list, the better terms / higher valuation you'll get from VCs.

1. A product / prototype with traction
   1. Examples:
      
      1. Facebook when they met with Peter Thiel (it had traction at Harvard / Stanford / Columbia)
      2. Oculus Rift when it raised money from Founder's Fund (it had traction on Kickstarter)
      3. Elon Musk when he raised money for Zip2 (he had 3 commissioned salesmen and a few local newspapers as customers)
      4. The Shark Tank contestants that get the best deals, with a bidding war between the sharks. (they all have demonstrated sales, preferably in the millions of dollars)
2. Positive cash flow
   1. Examples
      1. Elon Musk - 2003.10.08 - Stanford University Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture
         

         1. There was an ISP on the floor below us. Just like a little tiny ISP. And we'd draw a hole through the floor and connect to the main cable. That gave us our internet connectivity like a hundred bucks a month. So we had just an absurdly tiny burn rate. And we also had a really tiny revenue stream. But we actually had more revenue than we had expenses. So when we went and talked to VP's we could actually say we had positive cash flow. That helps, I think.

3. An impressive team with a product / prototype, but no users
   1. Examples:
      
      1. Jack Dorsey with Square (he and his cofounder paid some engineers to build a prototype)
      2. DropBox (they created a video showing what the final product would look like, and how it would work)
4. An impressive team, but no product / prototype
   1. Examples:
5. Conveying that you are going to work extremely hard.
   1. Examples
      1. 2015.12.26 - TC - How I Created A $350 Million Software Company Knowing Nothing About Software - This is the cofounder of Five9, John Sung Kim.

         1. Clearly, I needed help (therapy), so I asked my former boss at the discount brokerage firm if he knew of any angel investors.

            Thankfully, he introduced me to his favorite day-trader client and explained to him that I was a promising entrepreneur and that Tooter was an amazing engineer, which he absolutely was. I explained to the investor as passionately as I could that I was going to build a successful software company or die trying, and that I was into self-preservation, so…

            The day trader pointed to a picture of a small jet on his office wall and said, “I want you to help me buy this.” He then wrote us a check for $150,000 on the spot, and we were officially funded.

      2. Get the quote about Elon Musk pitching VCs for his company Zip2.

It may be better to NOT start with a summary of your idea, because people will immediately react to it without the benefit of the facts you have accumulated which support your idea. It may be better to strupture the pitch in this way:
1. About me / why you should trust me / things I have accomplished
2. Facts which are not commonly known and which, when considered together, suggest a particular course of action (business idea).
3. The idea.

2013.04.22 - Mashable - 5 Practical Tips for Perfecting Your Startup Pitch
http://mashable.com/2013/04/22/startup-pitch-tips/
- One of the partners at Founder's Fund (Thiel's firm) contributed advice

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