Perspective on Pitching

Having been at the ground floor of a startup before I’ve experienced writing the first lines of code, shipping a product, and then getting acquired, but I never had the experience of pitching or seeing someone else do.  Last Wednesday I did my first pitch for my startup, BizeeBee, in front of about 75 people, a panel of 4 angel investors, and alongside 7 other founders.  While this might seem nerve-wrecking to most, it was an experience I had been looking forward to for months.  I finally felt like a founder!  The event was sponsored by DukeGEN and limited to founders from Duke.

The reason I really liked this format was that before the founders presented the Angels took the time to tell us what they were looking for.  Each pitch last 6 minutes and there was a 3 minute Q&A period following each founders pitch.  Before announcing the winners,  the Angels spent time giving each business feedback, which I found to be extremely valuable because I got to experience first hand how they evaluate and think about business ideas.

Here’s what the angel’s were looking for:

1. Getting to the heart of the product and what problem it is solving
2. Large market
3. Explanation of Customer Acquisition strategy
4. Team: strong technical and business members
5. Polished presentation and understanding of each component of your business

Here’s what the Angels focused on during the QA and it making their final decisions:

1. Many of them questioned the actual market size, and drilled into the numbers presented.
2. How robust the technology was compared to competitors, and if it was enough of a differentiator.
3. How much of the product had already been built out.  Having an actual prototype versus a PowerPoint presentation was more powerful.
4. How capable the founding team was of executing on the business and technical side.
5. Traction and having customers that were using the product.
6. The methods used for attracting customers.  Angels really care about your distribution model.

I came in third place.  Here’s the feedback I personally received (yes I’m still leaving my readers in the dark about my product):

1. Great team, brand, UI, and simple product proposal.
2. Given that I’m targeting the SMB space, they were concerned about how scalable my business model is given how fragmented of a space I’m operating in.
3. They did emphasize the need for a couple more key hires such as a VP of Engineering and VP of Sales.
4. Traction – they’d like to see the customer feedback, how the product and brand awareness will spread, and if I’ll be able to start making money off of customers.

One final note, I want to thank my teammates Liz and John for all their support and hard work that went into helping me prepare the prototype and the pitch!  I couldn’t have done it without either of them 🙂

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