It’s pitch time!
For those who haven’t heard about the news already, we’re inviting the startup community to come and watch our startups demo.
After six months of intensive workshops, our startups are busy prepping for the muru-D Demo Night on the August 14th at the NSW Teachers Federation.
You can get tickets here and watch the countdown at: http://demo.muru-d.com.
Since everyone at muru-D is in pitching mode, this post will focus on pitching advice for those who are new to the startup scene.
To be a successful entrepreneur, not only do you need to have good business acumen and perseverance, you also need to be a great communicator. Convincing co-founders, advisors and investors to join you and put money on your startup is no easy feat! Pitching is an art that can only be improved over time through practice. Our startups have pitched over 100 times since we’ve first met them.
Since they’ve done it so many times, we’ve asked our co-founders for their one advice on pitching:
Ross, Zed Technologies
“Be natural and try to engage the audience, too often pitches just sound like reading a script.”
Adam, OpenLearning
“Focus on building traction and your unique selling proposition in your pitch.”
Holly, Pixc
“Always start with with a problem!”
Jeremy, Vistr
“Tell a story of a specific use case of how your customer engages with your product.”
Pem, Momentum Cloud
“Record yourself and watch yourself over and over again so you can see your speech pattern.”
Mike, Lime Rocket
“If you ever get the chance to pitch publicly, take it!”
Ken, Chatty Kidz
“Enter in as many pitching contests as you can so that you’ll learn to react better when things go wrong in the pitch.”
David, Safesite
“Be passionate and practice over and over again.”
Michael, Farmbot
“Be comfortable, well rehearsed and don’t read off the slides. Add a bit of drama to your pitch and modulate your voice.”
For those who are eager to master the art of pitching, here are some great books we recommend to perfect your deck and pitch:
- Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff
- How to deliver a TED Talk by Jeremey Donovan
- Say it with Charts by Gene Zelazny
- Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
- Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte