StartupEmpire – Pitch coaching

Last week I was at the StartupEmpire conference. Thanks to Jevon, David, Rick and everybody else who helped in putting the conference together. It was a great demonstration of how the local tech community can come together to help entrepreneurs.

One session of particular interest was the ‘insta-pitch’ session. In this, 5 companies came up on stage to give a 2-4 minute pitch. They then received candid feedback from a panel of VCs on what was good / not good about their pitches. First off, kudos to the companies that took this opportunity to do their pitch and be willing to receive the panel’s feedback in a public forum. However, as was mentioned by the panel, the pitches all needed work. Being able to successfully secure funding is an important factor in the success of a startup and this all starts off with being able to pitch well.

So, in the spirit of interactivity, lets try something out. E-mail me your pitches in the form of a powerpoint presentation. I’ll select and post some of the good ones to show examples of good pitches. For the non-so-good ones, I’ll give some suggestions for improvement and post the before / after.

A few guidelines:

Keep it to 6 slides of content.

If you are in stealth mode, feel free to doctor the name of the company / facts but just let me know this is not real.

Craft the pitch as an initial pitch (i.e. one you would give to an angel group selection committee or use to get a meeting with a VC). Your goal is to give a brief overview of all important aspects of your company & build interest and excitement that people will want to spend the time to learn more about the opportunity in a more detailed follow on meeting.

The standard no-harm rule applies.

craig (at) mapleleafangels.com