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No, I did not go on ABC’s Shark Tank and have Mr. Wonderful tell me to take my idea out back and shoot it. I accepted an offer to help out professors in the entrepreneurship program at the University of Cincinnati by judging investor pitch presentations from a group of their students with entrepreneurial ideas. In the 2019 IQ E-Pitch Competition I judged about 20 teams and later that week, I was on a small panel who judged 4 teams in an entrepreneurship course.
I was extremely impressed with the level of detail and confidence in which these graduate and undergraduate students presented their ideas. I have been on both sides of the table here as I have pitched and raised capital, but I have also worked with many accelerator companies to help them prepare for pitch presentations, etc. As an example, I have been a mentor with a local faith-based accelerator, Ocean, since its inception over 5 years ago. While judging, I focused on the 6 p’s of a startup company:
• Problem
• Product
• People
• Proof
• Profit Potential
• Overall Presentation
If a pitch team can do a great job in each of these areas, it has a realistic opportunity of being funded whether by individual angels or small institutional investors. As we learned from Simon Senek, we need to focus on the “WHY” for our businesses. If the teams can convince me WHY this is really a problem, WHY they are the team to solve it, WHY the time is now for this to occur, and WHY my best ROI is investing in their company vs another company, then they received the most encouragement from me, and I even offered a few of them by business card if they needed some help moving forward.
If I can help you with your startup company, or help you raise additional funding, please reach out to me.
