the story of our first pitch (but called the final pitch 1 of 3) The one where I luckily saw the ad

Okay - this is a continuation of my previous post on having short funds to pay for salaries, and by some miracle (actually a result of my oversight) we were able to survive the month. But then, that was only for a month.

After surviving by the teeth last May, I was set to balance the books.

So I had two tracks: Get more contracts/projects + Get some seed investment somewhere. The whole team hustled on both tracks, but let’s just first talk about the journey for our first outside seed investment.

It was late Thursday, I was at home drinking whisky with my wife while scrolling Facebook and I saw an ad: The Final Pitch Season 8 is open for applicants. After being rejected by different VCs I found in the internet (it is cool though that they reply), I just thought, why not. And this is no sh*t, Friday was last day of application, what are the chances?

It said that I submit a pitch deck (done, we have that), answer some questions (done, easy) and create a 1 minute video of me explaining our company. F*ck. How do I even do that?

I recorded myself alone, a little drunk, quite a weird feeling. The first try I did was just spontaneous, but then it turned out I was not good at being direct and brief, the video lasted around 5 minutes. So ok, I am not good at speaking briefly on the fly, so I wrote the stuff down. Blah blah blah.

But then I realized, how long really is 1 minute? How many words does it take to reach that time? Pretty buzzed I just went to read my first draft. Man, 3 minutes. Still long. I edited and edited until I reached 1 minute. 3 hours has passed I think, it was 1am I remember, then I recorded. I realized that what I read was indeed 1 minute, but I was like a robot.

If this was a TV show, then I need to be a little exciting, eh?

So I tried putting in some emotion. F*ck. It became a little above 2 minutes.

I was so frustrated at that time. But what else could I do? It was the only shot left, at least that is what I thought in that moment. So I trimmed it down more, and more, and more, but I still could not do it.

I was tired, a little tipsy, so I did what any half brain would do, I sped up the video. So my voice was a little squeaky, but I hit 1 minute! Yay!

I sent it I think 3 or 4am, not telling anyone, because you know, self esteem.

Friday was a little groggy for me, but hey, I shot my shot, it was now up to startup gods. Then a little late in the afternoon, there was an email from them.

They liked what they saw and would love to have a final screening that Saturday (the next day) through a video call.

OMG! My tummy was going round and round. I was able to do good by my company, felt like it has been a while since.

I called my sales lead and told him to join me in our pitch, Saturday morning.

His name is Carl, the person in the team the whole company cannot live without, was really excited. I was not as much. This is probably due to immense personal insecurity on my end, but I really hate laying down our company in front of strangers and allow them to judge its merits from a f-ing deck. But what am I to do? I need the cash. And Carl was excited, so that’s a good thing.

It was a rather short video call. It started with them saying hi, trying to make us feel at ease, then jumped immediately to the deck. I presented then they asked questions. The questions were not tailored to us, it was some laundry list of questions, but I would assume we were there nth interview and they were tired and bored as hell, so nothing against them.

“How do you think you are disrupting the market?”

“Who are your competitors? Where are you placed?”

“What are your projections for the following years?”

Well, I just presented the deck didn’t I? But of course I kept my cool, again, it was not their fault. I had a very sucky presentation, it was our first real pitch, so can you really blame me? Yes of course you can, but still, I am a defensive person.

I answered them as best as I could. They seemed to understand after a while, but it was also a wake call to me, I need a better way of talking about my company.

Here is the thing, I know the company front, back and sideways, and I talk to people like they know the company the same way. In my head it is simple, but I somehow always assume it is the same for all. Market research is not a popular field, but in my head, this small little world was everything, so blame me for assuming you know it too.

It ended quite okay. They said we passed would be up for shooting the next weekend. They said congratulations and pressed on telling us to practice more on our pitch and fix the deck. Yah, we did need to practice more, we suck, I did suck, but at least we got in!

Let me now talk about our pitch.