MassChallenge pitching in to help mentor entrepreneurs
Picture the scene: Kendall Square. Inside the Cambridge Innovation Center. A large group of entrepreneurs and future startupers all participating in the startup community’s renaissance-bolstering MassChallenge. This was no stuffy conference room; you could feel the energy flowing.
Future participants of MassChallenge came together Wednesday to pitch to one another for tips, advice and constructive criticism. They were perfecting their 1-minute pitches at P^3: Peer to Peer Pitching.
What makes a good pitch? John Hawthorne, the founder and CEO of MassChallenge broke the art of pitching down to three easy steps. What does it take to have a good pitch to potential investors, teammates and customers?
- Grab them with a hook or wedge: Grab your audience with something interesting about your company with a question or a “wedge,” as John puts it. Put the person you are pitching to in a difficult position to say no to what you are presenting to them. When John Hawthorne proposed MassChallenge to influential figures in Boston a year ago, he did it in a way that forced them to say, “Yes, I do want to know more, and when can we meet to discuss this in more detail?” Raise the interest in your company in a short but interesting way that grabs attention and makes the person you’re pitching leave wanting to know more. By hooking them with an open-ended question and targeting your response to your specific audience you are more likely to walk away with interest that will lead to a full-on meeting. Let the curiosity dig in and catch on.
- Explain what you do: What’s important here is that you do it in a unique way. What are you providing that is so beneficial? What is in it for me? What is unique to you and your company that sets you apart from the rest? Always, always think of the person you are pitching to. Put yourself in their shoes and tell them how your company is the solution to the problem. Here, good branding is crucial. You must make your pitch stick.
- Relay the benefits: Speak in plain English; no one wants to hear the gritty details of your technology in a 1-minute pitch. They want to know what your solution is and BAM — grab them with that in no uncertain terms. Show your passion and what you have done to make yourself reliable and what you have done that shows that you believe wholeheartedly in your company and your solution.
After everyone learned how to pitch, the participants all took a stab at it. Each person rotated four times with a partner and received beneficial comments in the ares of body language: posture, hands, eye contact; voice: volume, speed; message: clear, has a tag line; and communication: engaging, speaks with authority, time allocation.
After four rounds of pitching, the bold and gusty took to the stage. It was their turn to show what they had learned from their peers and hopefully to win an entrance to MassChallenge free of charge. Ten lucky people who pitched to the whole group took home $100 off the registration fee and one lucky founder took home a free ride to the competition. From my perspective, everyone who attended felt it was worthwhile. Not only could you possibly end up joining MassChallenge for free but also you were also able to practice your pitch and take home substantial information on how to pitch in any circumstance whether it be an elevator pitch in 30 second time window or to a VC in a longer format.
Look forward to hearing more about the five companies that stood out at P^3: Peer to Peer Pitching:
- Cognalytics: The winner of the free entrance to MassChallenge.
- Green Bean
- Rentabilities
- Transit Grub
- Snail Mail Print
The next MassChallenge event takes place on May 11th from 6-9 PM: Founder Dating. The purpose of this event is to meet people who want to take part in MassChallenge. Finding a co-founder can be a difficult task. Founder Dating will give entrepreneurs the opportunity to link up with a startup team. To find out more about Founder Dating please visit http://founderdatingmc.eventbrite.com/.
Finally, I’ll leave you with a few more tips from MassChallenge for your next pitch:
- Use the hook and play with it until you find the right one to base your many, different pitches off of.
- Use a question as a hook to grab your audience’s attention.
- Don’t use too much jargon and terminology that the audience doesn’t understand.
- Speed it up a bit, keep the attention and get to the point quicker.
- Tailor your pitch to your audience.
- Write out your pitches so you can hammer it out until you reach perfection.
- Practice, practice, practice. Put yourself out there. Attend events and go up to every single person in the room and pitch to them. Put yourself in uncomfortable circumstances. This will make you the best pitcher there ever was.
- Integrate feedback into your pitches.
