Thanks to everybody who has submitted a pitch in response to my post on pitch coaching. As I mentioned in the post, I’ll post some of the pitches & my feedback to help people refine their pitches. I’ll focus my commentary on 3 main questions:
1) Have you clearly outlined the problem & how your product/service addresses it?
2) Have you covered the main areas investors are interested in?
3) Have you generated a sense of interest that your company has real potential that people will want to take the time to learn more in a more in depth meeting?
As I’m not familiar with every company’s domain, I’ll more focus on the structure of the pitch and leave the fact checking of the content to the wisdom of the crowd.
The first pitch I’ll discuss is from a company called Reasonably Smart. Their pitch is located here.
My feedback I gave is as follows.
Have you clearly outlined the problem & how your product/service addresses it?
To level set, I have a corporate IT background so can understand the points you are making on slides 2 & 3. However, if you are pitching to a general angel group, you would probably loose 90% of the people on the first 2 slides as they would not have technology backgrounds. To make your pitch more accessible, I would re-cast these 2 slides to discuss the business problem from your end customer’s standpoint. i.e:
For app developers – cost advantages of micro-unit hosting vs per server or per slice hosting options
For hosting providers – cost advantages to higher utilization of their server inventory capacity
From a functionality standpoint, advantages of a richer set of technical services in your platform and what this means in terms of speed to develop, quality, operations, etc. and ultimately how this lowers cost.
All angels will have seen many deals involving a start-up developing and selling a software app. So if you can frame your company in terms like by using this platform a company can develop an app quicker (save on product development), get to market quicker (faster revenue ramp), and pay less in operational cost (accelerate time to profitability) – this is something they will be able to relate to.
Have you covered the main areas investors are interested in (market potential, revenue model, competition, management, go to market strategy, exit, deal terms)?
You have covered off some of the points but questions I would have would be:
The slide on competition is very complicated – I would simplify to a few key direct competitors and position them on how they stack up relative to your company.
How large is this market, how much revenue do you feel your company can make? Since this is a new market, if your competitors are more mature, show their revenue which can help validate this market space and give relative benchmarks against your revenue targets.
Who are your target customers. The list you provide on page 6 is quite large and would require very different sales approaches for a start-up vs. an enterprise company. What are you going to focus on and how will you do it?
What are the terms of the deal & how will investors realize an exit?
Have you generated a sense of interest that your company has real potential that people will want to take the time to learn more in a more in depth meeting?
This is a tough one to call for me. If I put my technical hat on: On one hand it sounds interesting due to the benefits in developing and operating apps but on the other hand I’m not that familiar with the PaaS space so can’t really judge if your offering is something that is already offered by other direct competitors.
If I put my business hat on: My comment would be that you have talked about a bunch of technology but have not provided any insight to ROI of customers to use this technology. So its hard to gauge the demand in the market for your offering or get a feel of what your company’s revenue potential is.
This is my take on the pitch. Feel free to post comments with other insights / alternate viewpoints as there is never one right way to craft a pitch.
If anybody else has pitches they would like feedback on, send to me at craig (at) mapleleafangels.com
There are a few geekmas parties going on this December, and they are selling out quickly. Both have been organized by members of the community, and look like they will be a blast.
Toronto based 
Montreal Start Up announced today the closing of an additional $2,000,000 for its venture fund from the Solidarity Fund QFL, bringing total assets under management to $5,000,000. The Solidarity Fund QFL joins Investissement Québec, la Conférence Régional des Élus, and 20 of Montreal’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors who partnered with Montreal Start Up to address the need for more early stage capital and mentoring.
StartupEmpire rocked! Here are some roundups in case you couldn’t make it: Flow Ventures 