SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/211359
Pitch Competitions: Where Business Ideas Meet Performance Art by Shermakaye Bass R NICOLE BURTON 16 SXSWORLD / NOVEMBER 2013 being able to see lots of companies and get lots of good feedback, all in one place." Professor Steven Kaplan at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business started that university's New Venture Competition back in 1996. While SXSW V2Venture winners, TAG Strategic, it is not a pitch Tim Chang, Karen Allen and Gil Blumenfeld (l-r). competition, but a fall-through-spring program that "helps (students) develop a winning business model," he sees the pros and cons of the trend. "My overall advice is that these pitch competitions are a sideshow. The real idea is to develop a viable and successful business. The competitions and the processes that go with them provide help and deadlines in reaching the goal of a real business," Kaplan says. "For the teams that win our competition, the worst thing they can do is go to another competition. Rather, they should go start the business for real." There is plenty of debate about this. One reader of a recent RudeBaguette piece about the pitfalls of pitch fests observed that some startups lose sight of their priorities: "Startups need to … focus on being startups and stop being companies whose primary purpose is selling their own equity." Carroll of Clever agrees. He believes in the pitch ecosystem but warns others of the dangers of confusing the importance of the pitch with that of the product: "The biggest risk is getting too focused on events like these. When you're pitching, you're not building anything of value; you're marketing. Every minute that you're preparing a pitch is a minute that you're not getting a new customer, talking to a new customer or writing code." Still, he sees pitch competitions as a huge opportunity that, when approached the right way, can make or break a startup. His top three pieces of advice are: First, talk about a product you have already built, even a prototype, and how people have used it successfully; second, tell the judges the story of how your path unfolded and why the company came into existence; and last, be comfortable and make a good presentation by practicing your pitch on your co-founders, friends or even random people on the street. Even you do stumble, it's not the end of the world, observes Boogar: "Fortunately, tech media has a tendency to forget past blunders and be forgiving. Everyone likes to see an entrepreneur stumble before he soars, and every good entrepreneur pitches himself as recovering from a stumble." He points out that the business world has never been for the weak of heart, and the pitch — whether in a board room or on a stage — has always been a form of bloodsport: "The technology industry embraces bleeding edge innovation, risk, gut feelings and the ability to talk a crowd over. 'Business' has always had a sort of hazing culture — put you in the spotlight and see if you shine or burn." n JESSICA COX emember when the only hope for a startup seeking an investor was to have an inside line, and your presentation typically involved pitching to a panel of suits in a boardroom or sweating through a power breakfast? That's so last week. Now, it's about pitch competitions and conferences with their pressure and what often amounts to entrepreneurial performance art. Above all, it's about parlaying those proverbial 15 seconds of fame into a lasting investment, preferably in the form of an angel investor who will throw money at your idea or fledgling company. This onstage oeuvre of lassoing a venture capitalist has become THE way to get noticed, and potentially funded. There are scores of these events around the world, from Austin and SXSW, which has four competitions targeting different industries (Accelerator, LAUNCHedu, V2Venture and Startup Showcase), to Startup Weekend in Denver, to Pitch NYC Conference and Competition, to LeWeb London, Webit Congress in Istanbul and Launch Festival in San Francisco, not to mention TechCrunch Disrupt, a movable feast of pitchery. And let's not overlook reality televisions shows like Shark Tank LAUNCHedu winners, Clever co-founders, Dan Carroll and Tyler Bosemeny (l-r). and The Pitch. These events all have varying angles and guidelines. Most put the budding entrepreneur in the hot seat with a limited amount of time, usually two to five minutes, while the audiences and judges — often reps from one-time startups like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn — hurl tough questions at the team or individual onstage. Heard of singing for your supper? How about singing for your startup's future? Punning aside, public/onstage pitching is a legit approach. The format is the reason why many of us now enjoy the benefits of hundreds of new-economy startup companies in our everyday lives. "Pitch competitions, from what I can see, were a gradual evolution," says Paris-based Liam Boogar, editor and cofounder of the French tech/startup website RudeBaguette.com. Originally from Silicon Valley, Boogar and RudeBaguette began tracking the pitch movement's upward trajectory in 2010. "The benefit of a pitch competition has always been, or (was) intended to be," explains Boogar, "that startups get feedback on their pitch and business, and the audience gets to, A) Play VC, and, B) see what a startup pitch is like, both good and bad." For Clever cofounders Dan Carroll and Tyler Bosmeny, pitch competitions were essential to putting their company on the map. Clever, which is based in San Francisco, took the top prize at LAUNCHedu during the most recent SXSWedu conference. "Startups have definitely become an element of pop culture," says Carroll, a former eighth-grade school teacher with a Harvard degree in human evolutionary biology. "Startups are kind of sexy and exciting, and the good thing about the pitch competition format is