In my last post, I gave some background about startup pitches and spelled out some of the key ingredients in pitch presentations, and I ended with a little peek into one of those presentations by Spool. In this post, I’ll break that presentation down even more to explore why I found it compelling.
Spool is a very promising startup with a great pitch presentation/speech about their products. They don’t have fancy presentation slides, they don’t have very emotional, touching personal stories, and the speaker doesn’t really try to be humorous. However, when I saw him pitch, he managed to tell a logical, convincing, and well-organized story about his product in a genuine and succinct way, and that won my trust.
So here’s a look at how he did it. (I thought the Spool guys handled the Q&A pretty well, too.)
I did a bit of transcription so I could easily see the structure and order of the presentation. Spool had a very simple live product demo, so I put together some of the slides and images from it below. (Some of the images are from their website.) That’s one big thing for startups: If you have a very cool and working product, the live product demo itself is worth more than a thousand words. You need the slides more when you are showing a concept, but if you have a live demo, then just show the demo.
Also, Spool only took a minute or two to explain the technology behind the product. I feel a lot of startups are trying to sell the sophistication of the technology they use — even before going into their idea. The tech side of the product is indeed crucial; however, you need to let your audience buy into your idea first. Get them up to speed with your concept and product, then tell them just a little bit how hard you worked on the technology behind it. That’s when they’ll really be convinced and start to appreciate the technology.
If you want to talk about startups, where else would be a better place than San Francisco and the Silicon Valley? As people say it, it’s where “all the action is happening.” However, before Facebook could “hijack” our social life, before promising startups like Square, Dropbox, etc. got tons more money than their teams could ever spend, they had to go through a pitching stage to introduce their products to venture capitalists so they could have the funding and resources to improve and scale their products/concepts.
I’m not sure if late summer is the startup “pitching season” in the Bay Area, but for the past few weeks, all of a sudden I’ve had the chance to sit in a few startup pitching events, including Pitch 11 in AT&T park, DISRUPT organized by TechCrunch, and the most recent one, the Plug and Play EXPO. There are various ways startups can pitch their products at events like this. Setting up a booth, handing out flyers, and doing a product demo is the most common one; sometimes startups get to do a five-minute “elevator-style” pitch presentation in front of a group of VCs; and there are even opportunities like the “startup battlefield” at DISRUPT, where startup teams present their products and participate in panel discussions and Q&A sessions to get immediate feedback or even challenges from VCs and successful entrepreneurs.
Imagine that after months or years of hard work putting together your team and your product, now you’ve got five to 10 minutes to introduce your baby to a group of people who might be able to help you bring your idea to the next level. That five to 10 minutes is pretty crucial — and it’s essential to figure out what to include, how to frame your concepts, and how to deliver those messages.
After sitting through 50+ pitching sessions/presentations over the past two weeks, I was surprised to see how good as well as how bad these pitching presentations could get. I’m not a VC, but it wasn’t hard for me to see that some startups spent their five minutes confusing me with their concepts and business models, whereas others seemed poised to be the next superstars of the Valley. I had to wonder: What are the ingredients needed for a successful pitch, and how can startup teams “cook” their pitching dish to satisfy picky VCs and potential customers?
So, if you’re an entrepreneur, first things first: What should you include in your pitch?
All those pieces are great to include, and I found they covered almost 90% of the content of startup pitching presentations. There could be even more ingredients to add depending on the specific pitching scenario and your product. However, I am sure a great chef wouldn’t want to put every tasty ingredient into the same dish (apparently, fusion is going out of style!). So the more important question becomes: How do you select and put together the content you want to present?
The goal is to tell your story in a way that makes the most sense and sounds very attractive. (It shouldn’t be that hard, right?)
Spool is a startup that helps people save the web content they are interested in reading later on their phone or tablets. It allows people to access the content (including web pages, flash videos, music, etc.) while they’re commuting, on a plane, or whenever and wherever they don’t have an Internet connection. The two guys from Spool did some pitching in TechCrunch’s startup battlefield and also had a five-minute presentation at the Plug and Play EXPO. I personally found their pitching style was GENUINE, CLEAR and CONVINCING, which sets a great example for startup pitch presentations.
So what content did they pull together, and how can other startups sell their innovations using these general components? In an upcoming post, I’ll break down exactly how Spool told its story. For now, though, here’s a peek inside the basic skeleton of Spool’s pitch.
[...] my last post, I gave some background about startup pitches and spelled out some of the key ingredients in pitch [...]
Apparently the startup “pitching” season is here. Several pitching events for small startups are happening these two weeks.
A few of us went to the pitch 11 event last week happened in AT&T park. Talking and walking in a space filled with over 90 startups can be a bit overwhelming, but it was a fun experience to see what everybody else has been up to in the valley, or even all around the world (some startups came as far away as Denmark, Korea, and Pakistan). So here are some image recaps from the event:
Another big pitch event happened yesterday in San Francisco Design Center. It was the DISRUPT event hosted by TechCrunch. As TechCrunch has been this great advocate for IT startups, DISRUPT attracted over 100 startups for showcase their products or prototypes in the ‘startup battlefield’ event. It’s interesting to see how some startups attended both the Pitch 11 and this DISRUPT event. Personally, I think DISRUPT did attract some more mature startups, mainly due to DISRUPT itself is a 3-day event with other types of tech/business activities (panel discussions, press conferences, etc.) as well. Also, the fact that TechCrunch, the host, is a great PR platform for startups, might have added more attractions to small to medium size startups.
EchoUser is still waiting for our first pitching opportunity to come up. Our EchoUser Analytics Tool will be the focus of our pitching. Our awesome EchoUser interaction designer and visual designer have already come up with some pretty cool mobile design concepts for the tool, so let’s wait and see 
