Not to trivialize the process, but here's some step-by-step suggestions: 1) First and foremost, verify that you're solving a problem that's truly a pain point

Not to trivialize the process, but here's some step-by-step suggestions: 1) First and foremost, verify that you're solving a problem that's truly a pain point for some significant number of people. Don't ask your friends, they'll almost always say yes. If you don't have direct access to someone who would potentially use your service, use an online survey (SurveyMonkey, for example) to sample your audience. The most important question you should be asking yourself right now is "Why would someone want this?" You're not your own customer. 2) Use your network and get intros. The chances of someone responding to you are much higher when you're connected by a mutual (and trusted) 3rd party. 3) You should have two pitch decks. The 1-2 minute pitch, and the 5-10 minute pitch. The 1-2 minute pitch deck gets attention. The 5-10 minute pitch deck tells what, why and how in more detail. You should also highlight yourself, and why you're the expert in this area. 4) If you don't have something built, at the very least have very detailed and polished wireframes. Ideally something that's interactive. This is basically a mashup of how to raise money and how to pitch and sell your product (since you seem to be focusing on acquiring a client who will pay you to build this solution vs pitching to a VC in order to build a company). If you (or you and some friends) can build an MVP, do that and give it to someone you know to use (most startups are more willing to try out these types of products, especially if you know the founders). If it's a good idea, and it works, you now have 'proof' that's actionable (mainly, numbers/metrics and user feedback). Also, you should be able to explain how this is going to help company X. Are you going to increase productivity by 50%? Are you going to lower costs by 25%? You should be able to explain, with fluency, what you're optimizing and the analysis behind that (that may be in the form of P&L analysis, for example). Most engineers going into this get hung up on the how. Companies rarely care how (although again, this should be in your pitch deck) you're going to build this because they have little or no technical background. They just want to know why your thing is better than the thing they have, or the things they thought about using/buying. BTW, don't say you _think_ you can help employees save the company time/money. Say that you can definitively save the company time/money by making process X for their employees Y times easier/cheaper. Use real numbers that show real gain. Make a very simple to understand chart/graph.