Start up pitch - Engineering Leadership Program at IE Business School
Fascinating times in the tech world. I have learned (the hard way) how the start up pitch process works these days, and what are the key messages to convey to investors to grab their attention (and their funding) for your project.
In essence:
1. Focus on the need (the problem) you are trying to solve. Articulate clearly your solution.
2. Metrics: how big is this thing?. Market size, audiences, where are they? How much interest do they have? proofs? (have you piloted this?)
3. Demo your solution as much as you possibly can.
4. Competition, who are they? risks?
5. Financials: not relevant overall as all investors consider very difficult to predict what will happen. Very important though to state clearly how much funding are you asking for, and what are you gonna do with it.
6. The team. Team is crucial in a start up. Investors invest in people not in projects. Always secure a capable team with the required experience and competencies.
7. Finally, the most important thing of all: put all the p-a-s-s-i-o-n into it.
Emotions are the engine of everything we do, if you are wholeheartedly committed with the project investors will notice by the way you show your emotions. This gives them confidence you're going to stay even if your project runs out of money.
For us, prior to graduation at the Engineering Leadership Program from IE Business School, we had to present our start up project to a jury of seasoned experts.
Out of the more than a dozen presentations, this project (our project) was selected as the winning start up, see below on slideshare:
[slideshare id=26433685&style=border:1px solid #CCC;border-width:1px 1px 0;margin-bottom:5px&sc=no]
Awarded Best Start-Up project by IE Business School at the Global Engineering Leadership Program in its 2013 edition.
Co-leaders: Antonio Mansilla Laguia, COO Kellogg EMEA & Javier Garcia, CFO Endemol
Jury:
. Paris de L'Etraz. PhD. Managing Director Venture Labs at IE Business School
. Ikhlaq Shidu. PhD. Chief Scientist at UC Berkeley's Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership
. Jorge Montes del Pino. PhD. Business Angel & Advisor. es.linkedin.com/pub/jorge-montes-del-pino/7/831/a56
. Roy Richards. PhD. Columbia Tech. Chairman & Board Member at Southwire Corp.
About the Global Engineering Leadership executive program: UC Berkeley has partnered with the IE Business School (ranked 7 globally) and the prestigious Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to offer a global version of the Silicon Valley Engineering Leadership Program.
Thanks to Antonio Mansilla, COO Southern EMEA at Kellog as well as to Javier Garcia, CFO and board member at Endemol.
Thanks also to Mario, Antonio's 9 years old son, who kindly let us into his room at his home to install the Smarthings hub we used for demoing purposes.