Distill it down
Lots of early stage ventures get bogged down in the complexities of writing business plans, and consequently the number of PowerPoint pages created can become unwieldy.
For better or worse, a pitching event is an opportunity to boil down an idea to its essentials, re-formulate the problem that your startup is solving and test the efficacy of your solution.
It forces the entrepreneur to think through the value proposition and distil it to a concise message or slogan – always advantageous for the start-up’s future marketing strategy. Many companies never have a chance to present at pitching events (or never seek to).
There is, of course, a risk that you end up spending time prepping, while ultimately getting no further.
I think that view is short-sighted. Pitching events and ‘demo days’ can provide “milestones” for a young business, bringing valuable feedback and contacts, while allowing the founder(s) to further hone their strategy or presentation.
Stand out from the crowd
Investors see and hear thousands of pitches, and as a result are often unable to drill down into the detail of each aspect, at every presentation.
Instead, they rely on pattern recognition, or seek out themes that resonate. To be clear, VCs go to pitching events to meet businesses, but – additionally – to get the vibe of trends, to see what’s talked about and simply to meet great founders, regardless of their ideas.
If you grab their attention, it means you or the content of the pitch (and ideally both) are good.
The VC is happy, as in just 10 minutes, you have shared the highlights of your vision, product, team, traction so far and next steps on your journey. Furthermore the same VC will have seen at least a dozen more pitches, all within the short space of time provided by the pitching event, which would never have accommodated a similar number of full company presentations.
So pitching events are a great way to find a match. And they’re not just a one-way street for the VC.
They’re also your chance to push the attending VCs for opinions, ask for feedback and mentoring, as well as generate some early users (where you will witness self-selection in practice: see how many VCs bother registering or logging in to your service after promising to do so!).
Follow up to build relationships
Your job is then to move to the next step and set up a follow-up meeting, for which there is no substitute.
You probably met a ton of people at the pitching event; a quick follow-up afterwards is the ideal way to kick-start a relationship.
A further “preview” of your business, for example, where you add a few slides with detail into the deck you presented, will be appreciated. If the VC asked for a demo signup, it might help to have a working log-in ready, and anything that will encourage engagement will help.
Through follow-up interaction, a rapport can be built between the VC and the entrepreneur, where the two will start to explore each other’s dreams and ambitions, and hopefully sow a seed for a long term partnership.
Ultimately, I feel that any (including startup pitching) platform, which enables businesses and VCs to rub shoulders — and where such relationships can be born – can only be beneficial for our wider tech startup ecosystem in the long run.