After 10 years of attending events by Gold Coast Venture Capital, the EDC, The Funding Post, MIT, eMerge Americas, SFIMA, SFTA, New Tech Community, Miami Innovation Fund and probably 5 or 6 other groups in South Florida, I decided we would run our own tech pitch event here at @dsxlabs in The Greenhouse in Boca Raton. We ran the first event on Wednesday, October 15th. I heard it was a great success from the attendees. We are running a follow up event on Wednesday, November 19th at 6pm at The Greenhouse. To learn more click here.
Would I Pitch?
I am definitely not new at giving pitches to raise capital myself. I have proven to be quite average. But I keep on trying. I have given about 4 pitches this year alone for my own start-up. What I was trying to do with this event is to make sure the attendees get what they need from the event, the best I could help them.
More About Pitches
I am trying to classify these pitch events in his blog article. I attended 2 FundingPost.com events this year. They are good at what they do and really serve the venture and angel community and not the entrepreneur community well.
Most of these funding events are centered around a successful entrepreneur, an Angel Investor speaking or a Venture Capitalist speaking or a panel or a combination of both. And typically 75% of the event revolves around these speakers and panels. These types of events are good. I have been to quite a few and learned a bunch of stuff. Some allow for pitches after the event, some don’t. Some charge, some don’t. They are all different.
Problem for all the entrepreneurs with these typical events is they don’t really get the exposure they need and usually there is not enough time at the end for the entrepreneur to make the contacts with potential investors that is needed. What people don’t understand is trust is probably the number one issue when investors look at tech start=ups. Will this tech start-up survive and can this guy, gal do the job?
What Is A Tech Start-up Pitch?
By pitch, I mean a person gets up and sells their concept to a crowd, which could have a bunch of investors, angels, etc. So we have established pitching for seed capital, for instance, requires getting up and saying what you do, the market, how you are going to market, how much capital you need, etc.
What Is The Difference Between Pitch Types?
There are 3 types of pitches.
A Pitch Deck Pitch
There is the old standard Pitch Deck presentation. It would typically be a 10-30 page powerpoint presentation. There are a few alternatives out there like Prezi and Google Presentations. At this time I would highly recommend against both those alternatives. Prezi is a terrific app, but it is a bit of black hole in terms of your time and it can be distracting to viewers if not done well. Google presentations may have gotten better but last time I tried it, it was just useless. Plus you need a screen and hardware to run a pitch deck presentation. This is an old school way of pitching now.
A 3 Minute Elevator Pitch.
In 3 minutes you need to cover 5 core areas for most investors to peak their interest. They are what is it? what’s your business model? what is your market size? how you get to market? and what do you need and why are you pitching? Not easy to cover in 180 seconds. That is the pitch I prefer though for investors to get a sense of what you do and your capability to explain it.
A 1 Minute Pitch
I did one of these at a recent FundingPost.com event in Miami. For about 50% of the people pitching it just turns into a disaster. At the event I attended where I pitched 2 entrepreneurs never got past saying hello. They were totally not where they should have been at the 30 seconds/half time. It is virtually impossible to get your points across in this manner, so I don’t recommend running a 1 minute pitch. It is a waste of time.
My Philosophy
We are focused on running events which help entrepreneurs, by giving them time to pitch and giving them the time they need to network with potential investors, advisors, co-founders, tech partners, business partners and other resources. So, we spend a little bit of time on letting companies pitch, have no or little speaking (that’s what other events do) and we let people mingle using CEO Space techniques.
So, when are we doing the next one.
We just announced our 2nd tech start-up pitch event and networking on Wednesday, November 19th at The Greenhouse run by @DSXLabs and The BRIC (Boca Raton Innovation Center). I am starting to search for the 10 companies that will pitch. At the first event about 1/3 got their pitch on track. 2/3 were lost. A few did not use our format to answer those specific questions or got nervous. It truly is nerve-racking to get up in front of an audience, especially your peers. So I understand the nerves. That is why I recommend to people pitching to have a piece of paper in front of them that keeps them on track if they lose their mind when they talk in public, like me!
If you are interested in attending or pitching at our next event then keep an eye on both our EventBrite and Meetup Group. The best thing for you to do is join our Meetup Group, see below:
http://www.meetup.com/Boca-Raton-Tech-Start-ups-Meetup/
We also have a separate EventBrite listing:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dsx-labsthe-bric-tech-2nd-start-up-pitch-event-nov-19th-tickets-13965576415