I attended VC Taskforce’s Elevator Pitch Roundtable tonight. It’s a once a month event where entrepreneurs are given 90 seconds to pitch their business to a panel of VCs. The VCs follow up with a few questions, offer some advice on their pitch and business model, and finally they assess the business.
While I personally wasn’t that impressed with the pitches I saw. Most of the presenters need a class in presentation 101 and should have had a better understanding of their competition.
I was impressed by the educational value of the entire evening. The VCs’ interaction with each entrepreneur was invaluable not just to the individual presenting, but to everyone watching. You got to learn a lot about a VC’s rationalization and decision making process. Mostly, they see startups falling into two camps. They either have defensible IP (intellectual property) or they’re an execution play-meaning they’re hoping their business will deliver in a better way or deliver faster to market than the competition (or foreseeable competition).
From there, the VCs scrutinize the start up’s ability to deliver on its value proposition vs. the market need and competition. In the end, they determine on a scale from 1-5 the entrepreneur’s potential to get funded.
