Entrepreneurship: Going to Innovate!2010 Pitch Slam Amsterdam
On April 6th I went to the Pitch Slam Amsterdam organized by Innovate!2010. The whole event is part of a larger framework where the challenge is to complete locally first in order to compete on a global scale later. Guidewire Group which is the underlying organizer searches for the “most promising startups” and their partners include firms like PayPal, Microsoft, HP, HSBC, IBM, and so on.
Host of the event was Mike Sigal who did a great job leading startups, pitchers, judges, and audience. His main point in giving feedback on the pitches really stuck with me as he told us about a PepsiCo CEO. The CEO responded to the interview question “What is the single most important activity that you do” by saying “I spend about an hour a day on improving my communication skills”. Mike stressed the meaning and possible payoffs of doing this and said that he also believes that this is a crucial point for startups. Communicating what you do, who you are, and where you want to go are the most important activities when seeking investors, supporters, and customers.
Winner of the Amsterdam edition of the Pitch Slam is the website TinyPay.me (www.tinypay.me). CEO Richard gave a pretty cool and super-natural pitch which you can see here. Their concept is that you can sell anything via Facebook or Twitter without having to sign up for another service. Instead you can use their site to create an ad in about one minute and use your social media profiles to make people aware of your offers and let your friends help you promote your item. When you sell your item the purchase and deal is done through PayPal and TinyPay.me gets 5% of the sales price. In essence this allows you to sell something online without going through the hassles of eBay. If you like the concept you can become a fan on Facebook.
The value of the whole event was also driven by the enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and likable set of judges who gave great feedback on all pitches. This was particularly interesting since it offered direct insights into how a VC (a couple of them are investors) and market experts look at startups and what good and bad points they see immediately. In order to make results and feedbacks comparable on a global scale every Pitch Slam uses the “G/Score” to evaluate ideas. As the letter G might indicate it is a product of Guidewire Group and explained in detail on their website. Basically it tries to capture the most essential business dimensions of a startup and rate them on a 1 (worst) to 4 (best) scale. The score is intended to give a rough overview of a startup and help external parties to make a decision on whether or not it is interesting for them to talk to that startup. Looking at the “cheat sheet” that was passed out to everyone I found the criteria quite objective and well-chosen.
In general I can only recommend that you go to one of the other Pitch Slams that are still to take place in Europe until the end of April and then in the US in early summer. Check out the schedule here.
read moreBusiness Practice: Texan IT-Service Strategy
In a recent conversation with a friend who is starting to sell his hosting services big time I was reminded of some business advice I got from a Texan entrepreneur. We had met at Texas A&M University where he was giving a guest lecture on entrepreneurship. He made it big by selling pre-built websites to Texan farmers in the 1990s.
When it came to selling its services he was not very successful at the beginning. He and his team went to many IT conferences to present their unique system of having a pre-built website where the content of the individual farmers are just inserted through a standard mask. The more conferences they visit the more money did they lose and the less sales did they make. It did not take long until they were seriously considering closing down their business. But quitting was not an option for them and so they decided to completely overhaul their marketing and sales strategy.
From that moment on they started to go to agricultural fairs for fertilizer or tractors. Their idea was to be where their customers would go instead of where their competitors would be. In essence this sounds very straight forward but I guess still many companies are not doing this. Today, the entrepreneur owns and runs one of the largest web-design and hosting firms in the United States being market leader in Texas and several other (agricultural heavy) states.
The example of the friend of mine sounds like a good implementation of this advice. Offering hosting services they are actually not going to HostingCon or similar events but rather focus on conferences where developers meet up.
The advice is very straight forward and simple to implement. Next time when you think about how to spend you marketing / sales budget think of this advice and what that would mean for you. Make sure you leave a comment on what you think of this advice and how you would use it.
read moreToby who?
I'm a passionate entrepreneur, nerd, investor, speaker, and startup evangelist. I love to start things and see them grow. Whenever I can I will introduce people to the option of being a free person through pursuing their own dreams and ventures.