Over the past few weeks, there has been a huge demand in Silicon Valley for 2 minute pitches. I don’t know what’s going on right now, but the momentum in the Bay Area is vibrant and filled with tremendous energy and hope for raising money and finding great resources for start-up companies of all shapes and sizes.
In their search, they usually find themselves at places like VCTaskforce or PlugandPlayTechCenter pitching for exactly 2 minutes to a panel of investor judges. It’s a little like Dancing With The Stars in that each investor holds up a card to vote on the company they just heard. The winner, like in the TV program, gets the prize. And, the prize is usually a plague, trophy, or even a cash award!
It’s humbling to me that over that last few weeks, I have had the distinct honor of working with three companies who all achieved high honors with their presentations. Take a look:
Yesterday, at gigaOm Structure 2011, there were 11 companies in the cloud arena that went up on stage for 4 minutes to pitch to an audience of about 1,000. At the end of the presentation, the venture investors handed out a score of 1-10 followed by one investor giving feedback. dotCloud hired me a few weeks before to coach them for the event.
The results were unexpected. While Solomon did really well on stage, there was one other company that seemed to come very close to dotCloud in the judges scores. But, in the end, dotCloud took home the top prize out of the 11 companies AND they took home the People’s Choice award too! The voting was from the audience and people who were watching on-line. It was sooooooooooooo fun to see the bar graph growing when the voting starting coming in. dotCloud’s votes were at least 10x everyone else on stage.
Well done Solomon! And, thank you Patrick McGovern for finding me since we met at DEMO many years ago.
On June 20, at the Rocketspace incubator in San Francisco, 12 young start-ups were given a chance to pitch to 3 angels and 2 venture capital investors hosted by Keiretsu Forum. Guess how much time each presenter had? You got it. They had 2 minutes! The results?
I started working with Andreas Wilkens at MediaFunnel for about 2 weeks before the event. Once he was invited to pitch, we spent numerous hours rehearsing the pitch so that it sounded natural and engaging. Andreas won first place and he is also an IBM Smartcamp finalist headed to N.Y.C. to battle it out with 3 other companies!
To see what Mediafunnel is doing with IBM Smartcamp, check out Andreas’ 1 minute pitch. The intent of this short pitch is to find people who will “Like” the idea and vote for him. If you use social media in business, you need to hear what MediaFunnel can do for you. And, if you like what you see, please send Andreas and his team a Like vote!
On June 13, at the VCTaskforce, 12 companies went up in front of a panel of angel investors for their 2 minute pitch followed by 4 minutes of Q&A followed by a few more minutes of non-defensible feedback from each investor. The results?
Jostein Svendsen, CEO of Creaza, won first place! Jostein is the man in the light blue shirt at the front of the room. He has an amazing product that lets people edit video and render video in the cloud. It’s fun and easy to learn how to use. Unfortunately, they are still in a private beta and it requires a special code to get in and play around. They should be generally available soon. Way to go Jostein!
On June 9, 2011, PlugandPlayTechCenter held an investor expo where 32 companies were given 2 minutes on stage to pitch their company opportunity to an audience of about 500 people with 50 or so investor VIP judges. Jostein Svendsen, the CEO of Creaza came out on top!
