Yesterday, that’s the challenge 50 entrepreneurs accepted at Start Up Riot, hosted at The Fox Theatre. This event is one, in a series of events in Atlanta, designed to showcase and fuel the start up community. As a native of Atlanta, I thought The Fabulous Fox, as we affectionately refer to it, was the perfect backdrop for this event. This landmark has a long dramatic history of surviving tough economies, and through the years it’s required a fair share of pitching to build and then find owners and managers that make it the thriving center it is today.
Start Up Riot is an annual event, where 50 nervous and excited entrepreneurs take the stage, with just 4 slides and 3 minutes to pitch their creative concepts to an audience filled with investors, press, friends and technology enthusiasts.
It was a long day but well organized, and there was lots of positive tension in the room. Bo Peabody, author, venture capitalist, serial entrepreneur gave the keynote address and he spoke about how important passion is to entrepreneurship. He had great stories and solid advice for everyone in the room. After his keynote we took a short break and then we moved into the first hour of pitches.
In my opinion, all 50 of these crafty entrepreneurs are winners but they were competing for a bounty of prizes, as well as possible funding and even exposure. Yesterday’s winners were chosen by the attendees and the winners were….Less Accounting, Nexpense and Regator.
If you are thinking about participating next year here’s my advice:
1. Go for it: This is an awesome event, well run and really important to the start up community in Atlanta, this could be just the exposure you need to take your concept to the next level.
2. Practice, practice, practice: It doesn’t matter how well you know your material it’s critical to practice your pitch several times, go to start up gauntlet, get objective feedback, be open to constructive criticism.
3. Be engaging: It’s hard to get excited about a presenter who’s reading from a script, public speaking is tough but the audience wants to connect to you, be expressive, this is your passion and you really believe in your concept don’t just tell us, show us.
And, one last tip, if you missed Start Up Riot this year, sign up for their mailing list so that you don’t miss it next year.
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Excellent tips for next year's startups. I think I'd also add that they should show their product as much as possible. There were several presentations that only talked about what their site/product did but didn't show a screenshot or demo. It's much more memorable and easier to understand what your product does if we can see it. I'd much rather see that then the market graphs pointing up and to the right.
I also think, if its possible, it would be a more powerful presentation if they would show a URL at the beginning of their pitch for all the people in the audience with laptops and smart phones. There were many that showed it at the very end of the presentation but at that point there wasn't enough time to check it out because the next startup was coming to the stage.
So if I could add a 4th suggestion it'd be: Demo, demo, demo.
Jeff
You are so right! The 4th tip should be: Demo, demo demo in some cases that would have helped me tremendously to better understand their product and catch their passion. And on a day where I'm seeing 50 presentations the demos definitely are much more memorable. Thank you so much for adding it to the post!
I also agree with you on the adding the url info on the first slide, it would have been great if everyone had their name on that slide as well, there were several who did not include that.
Robyn
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