SmartCompany’s inaugural early-stage startup competition, The Pitch, was a roaring success. On 1 September, 10 budding startup founders pitched their ideas to an exclusive judging panel and more than 200 audience members — a nerve-racking experience for even the most seasoned entrepreneur.
In the wake of that event, SmartCompany senior business journalist David Adams sat down with the winner, runner-up and judges of The Pitch to explore current trends in the startup world as well as advice on the best ways to approach a pitch. Here were some of the top takeaways from the webinar.
No matter what industry you want to penetrate, competition is bound to be high. That means every pitch is a new opportunity to take your startup to the next level — it’s no wonder so many founders struggle to effectively communicate their unique selling point. John Kearney, Head of Startups at AWS, was one of the judges of The Pitch and had some keen advice for founders on what to focus on and what to avoid.
“There’s no silver bullet. No recipe or playbook you can use to deliver the perfect pitch, because every startup idea we hear is unique in itself,” he says. “One of the key aspects of a solid pitch is around storytelling. It’s got to be structured, logical and cohesive because you’ve only got a very short amount of time to get your idea across, and you don’t want the audience to be reading your slides. You want them to be listening and watching as you present.”
Kearney says this is where investors look for a founder’s passion, enthusiasm and confidence around the problem they’re trying to solve.
“Preparation and dry runs are really important,” he adds. “The other thing that is super-important is understanding the commercialisation of your idea — so being able to articulate if there’s actually a market you’re going to address.”
Finally, Kearney advises that founders need to know what they want from the people they are speaking to — not just be pitching for the sake of pitching.
“What is it that you’re trying to get out of the pitch? If it’s to an investor, you’ve got to be mindful of what you’re going after, whether it’s equity-only, control, or you’re looking at an exit. Understanding what you want from the pitch is super-important.”
For Alex Khor, co-founder of AfterWork Ventures, who also judged The Pitch founders, he was truly impressed by the sheer ambition of the startup founders, saying they were “totally unafraid to back bold and ambitious ideas at their earliest stages”.
While ambition is important, equally critical is having a clear vision, Khor says.
“Where we [as investors] get most excited is when founders are able to paint a really clear picture of a future in which their business plays an important role in delivering value for a large audience of customers,” Khor says. “That’s exactly what we saw with the startups at The Pitch.
“Obviously there’s only so much that can be said and conveyed in a few short minutes during a pitch, but what was incredibly clear from these founders was how much thinking and depth of work had gone into their businesses and ideas beforehand. That showed there was a lot more to discuss if we had a chance to dig beneath the surface later on.”
A litigator for more than 15 years, the switch to entrepreneurialism has been an exciting one for The Pitch runner-up Kristen Migliorini, founder of KomplyAi. But she’s honest about how communication can get bogged down in the minutiae during a pitch, especially when it involves technical concepts you are trying to break down for the layperson.
“This idea of communicating in a really simple way to the right people is at the heart of everything we want to do with KomplyAi,” Migliorini says. “So my absolute top tip in terms of helping other founders to explain difficult concepts is to talk about the outcome and not the tool. That’s what has been most successful for me.
“So if you think about artificial intelligence and how it’s reimagining our world, you could say, ‘Okay, well what’s the positive benefit of the tool that you’re interacting with?’ That’s one of the things that I did at The Pitch — I spoke about the attributes of myself as a founder and the problems we’re trying to solve.
“That’s my number-one tip: keep it simple, but also personalise it, story-tell and talk about outcomes.”
Taking out top gong at The Pitch was Amber Linz, founder of Zipr, who received $100,000 in AWS credits to help drive her budding idea into a profitable business.
For Linz, her success on the night was more about knowing her concept inside-out than any particular strategy.
“One of the biggest things that I actually took away from The Pitch was about the space that I’m targeting specifically,” Linz says. “I know this will apply to a lot of founders, especially if you are targeting a really broad, massive market and you can go about it in so many different ways.
“But you have to remain true and always keep to your core problem: that unique insight. Keep that with you always and the solution will come. Then you’ll get feedback and your pitch will iterate, but as long as you keep that with you, where your journey leads you will always be based on that fundamental problem.
“That’s the message I want to pass on: I may not have the most experience in this room, but everyone has their own journey and unique insight into some problem — so hold that with you always.”
One final tip from Khor was directed at all founders — whether they are seasoned veterans or only in the ideation phase of their startup:
“The best time to get moving is today,” Khor says. “To all of the founders in the audience, I guarantee you’re going to make hundreds of mistakes along the way. So it’s probably better to just get them out of the way earlier when the stakes are low versus down the track when things might matter a little bit more.”
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