Winning the nomination “The best startup with the prospect of entering the American market”, Spb Startup Day 2017 and thoughts about pitches

In early September, Spb Startup Day 2017 took place in St. Petersburg. The event is interesting for at least everyone who is connected with the startup theme or at least thinks that it is connected. In this article I will tell you about my impressions of the event, and at the same time I will share the successes of our startup JEvents - a victory in the nomination “Best Startup with the Prospect of Entering the American Market” with a prize in the form of a trip to New York and not only ...

Looking ahead, I note that this event and preparation for it gave me a lot of experience. Therefore, I will try to formulate my thoughts as short advices to myself.

Spb startup day

My acquaintance with Spb Startup Day began in 2015 absolutely by accident ... The mood was skeptical - I did not expect anything from him, however, I decided to go out of curiosity. Why did I think so? Perhaps I was projecting the experience of attending other conferences, where there were two different inclinations — either marketing, where everyone was trying to sell you something, or technical bias — where the spotlight was a robot running Java that could keep balance if you push it. (no, it was not as fascinating as on the Boston Dynamics video).
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I was pleasantly surprised. The event was not only interesting, but it was also very professionally done. After him, new thoughts, knowledge and interests. From myself I can say that I recommend everyone interested in technologies to visit Startup Day. Interesting here were not only the ideas of startups or the reports of the speakers, but, first of all, people: active, energetic - this is very nice and useful to get acquainted with. After him, new thoughts, knowledge and interests.

Tip: Go to different events in the area that interests you, read the program, the list of lecturers, make acquaintances.

I was looking through the mail while on vacation, and among other things I came across a letter from IIDF (if you have not heard before, this is the Internet Initiatives Development Fund, which among other things organizes Startup Day). The letter was the announcement of the event, from which I learned about the pitches competition.

Who do you think goes to such pitching contests? For some reason I thought that only cool startups that already have a great product, big sales and in general they are doing very well. Why do they then go there at all, I did not think about it, but I confidently believed that the rest had nothing to do there. But, for the sake of interest, I decided to see the list of prizes. It turned out that there are several nominations, one of which is “the best startup with the prospect of entering the American market” with a prize in the form of Moscow-New York-Moscow tickets and a week in the iDealMachine office and their help in US customer development. This was exactly what is needed for our project, which recently began its entry into the US market.

My wife said that it is worth trying to send an application for a competition, because we do not lose anything, but if the application passes the selection, it is possible for the project to be beneficial. Why? Many people on holidays, suddenly there will be no competition either :) In fact, I didn’t really believe that at least I would go through the selection for the pitching contest itself. Prepared a fairly simple and short presentation, told in it what we are doing, sent.

Tips: Listen to your wife!) Rest, at least sometimes - so that there is time and effort to switch attention to something else! Do not be afraid to take part in something or send somewhere an application, especially when there is nothing to lose.

What is JEvents?

By the way, this is a sticker from our set of "Jewish stickers", which in the Telegram and iMessage have already been installed by more than 50,000 people!

I fully admit that you have not heard about our modest project of the Jewish mobile application JEvents . So yes, it is Jewish, because we collect information about Jewish events, news, vacancies, programs and courses available in the city. We started about 2.5 years ago in Petersburg, now we work in Moscow and even in New York.

Our application and website are a poster of events, with a catalog of programs and other Jewish opportunities (well, and where in the application without Jewish jokes and wisdom). Dozens of people work on all this happiness, so that thousands of interested users can use the systematized information. What they are doing.

Preview pitches

My application with the presentation was promptly answered, invited to the pitching training. It turned out that about 50 projects will take part in the competition! 50? Our chances of winning a nomination of 50% (either win or not) at this point fell 25 times to 1 in 50 or 2%.

60 seconds was allotted for each pitch. The task to pack a story about your project in a minute seemed difficult: to determine what information about the project should be left and how best to present it.

By the way, the training was serious, the organizers had valuable and accurate feedback and recommendations on preparation. Each participant was given advice on what to change, what to add, what to refuse, what to focus on. As a result, the first versions of the pitches were noticeably different from what was on the Spb Startup Day scene.


This hall was seen in front of those who climbed the stage Spb Startup Day 2017.

My conclusions regarding pitches

The pitches had different goals. Someone wanted to attract investors, and someone just wanted to take the opportunity to tell about his project from the stage to a large audience. Someone already has a product with a thousand users, and someone just came up with an idea and a presentation from one or two slides.

What is a pitch for me?
I perceive this format as a very fast presentation on the run, to someone very important and busy. You were only for a minute in the elevator with the investor, he is not up to you, but there is nowhere to go. This is your chance! Briefly, in the case so that he has time to understand what you are doing. Time is short. The less time you have, the more you need to prepare for this. You can tell about your project for 1.5 hours without preparation, and if you need to tell in 60 seconds?

It is very difficult (and maybe not necessary) to compare the pitches of SPb Startup Day 2017 on any one scale, but I think it’s worth a look.

Who should go on stage?
If the excitement interferes with clearly and confidently speaking through the entire presentation, try to find a person in your team who will cope with this better. To answer difficult and important questions about the project, of course, should someone very well versed in it. But to tell 60 seconds from the scene is better for someone who does not fall into a stupor at the sight of thousands of people in front of him.

Are you a CEO? 2 years of SMM experience? Need to talk about this in a pitch?
Many projects spent precious seconds and presentation slides to show team members and roles in the project. Well, you know what I mean. Photos in circles with the signatures of the CEO and CTO, and so on. I think that this is not always appropriate, and in many cases you can do without it. Especially when you and your project are little known, and the competencies and experience of team members cannot impress, add weight. At the same time there were, of course, a couple of teams who had this very appropriate - the experience of the team added interest to the project.

Does your project have the necessary resources?
There are projects that start to work only with a large audience. For example, Avito - who needs to place ads where nobody sees them, because there is Avito, and millions go there. If you launch Avito killer - say at least a word about the resources for recruiting the audience. Sometimes the announced projects seemed simply incomparable in scale with what was presented to the audience ...

Competition with your slides
You're not so simple project, right? It can be difficult for people to simultaneously focus on what you are saying and on complex slides with lots of diagrams, graphs, pictures and information, it’s best to get rid of. Especially because 20-30 people have already performed before you. You have a little time - 60 seconds - decide what will be the main, and what addition. Either you complete the slides, or they complement you. Help people understand what to focus on.

Name, contacts!
Your project may become interesting to someone from the 3rd or 5th slide, make sure that your contacts and the name of the project are not only on the first slide, but also at the end.

What do you want?
Does your project need 1,000,000 rubles to increase the number of sales by 10 times, and the average bill by 2 times? So tell me! Want people to download your app? Tell them about it!

It seems to you that you made a clear presentation? Check this!
Show the presentation to friends far from your topic? Will they understand everything? What questions will they have?

Come to "him"
Have you seen from the outside how often a person crumples before approaching an investor? It is not always easy. If in your team you do it better than others - do it. Contact, write, come up, let's get a business card, let's look at the app in your hand, take their smartphone (asking permission) and put your app there! It is difficult, it may seem wild, inappropriate, but it is not only your personal chance. This is a chance for your team!
Today you will take the investor’s smartphone in your hands, put your application in - tomorrow your programmer’s wife will be proud of her husband, because his project has been recognized, appreciated, noticed, the programmer himself is happy, he has received recognition. Try to think this way when it is hard to approach someone.

The victory of JEvents in the nomination "The best startup with the prospect of entering the American market"

About this short. In this nomination won the project JEvents. For me it was very unexpected. I think our team is to blame for everything, which is trying very hard (although it can and should be better). There were users in the hall! They approached, praised, shook hands. When you communicate with people through a monitor or smartphone screen, you don’t have such feedback, and there’s not enough of it, likes and reposts are not in that league at all.

What did this victory give us? An additional reason for pride for the project on the part of the team is important! New installations, new interesting acquaintances, new ideas, new energy.

It’s too early to talk about the practical benefits of the prize. I'll go to New York to iDealMachine - be sure to share it.

Record Spb Startup Day

Here is a record of the entire event, the pitches contest begins at about 2 hours and 53 minutes. 50 projects will take place in 50 minutes. I suggest you write in the comments which of the projects you liked the most. It is very likely that the representatives of these teams will read these comments, they will be warm and pleasant.

PS

And most importantly: We are looking for a partner and project coordinator in North America. It will be very good if in the city of New York. We have a lot of ideas, a good working project, a potential source of funding at the start.

If you are interested in talking about it or it may be of interest to someone of your friends, write to jevents.app@gmail.com