New corps and "Evangelization" skills
Last Friday I attended an early venture breakfast where young companies go on stage and present their business plans in an effort to secure funding. The audience was mostly venture capitalists, all with different investment stage philosophies. Some like to come into the early stages, some mid and some when companies are fully matured and are looking to scale after achieving cash flow positive status.
I have gone to many of these over the years and it is a fascinating process that everyone in Innovation management should be exposed to; it presents us with a unique opportunity to experience a drastically different perspective and energy. It is, in short, a new ecosystem that needs to be understood well, specially if one works with young companies as I do.
I found that these entrepreneurs could also learn a thing or two from other – more corporately focused "intrepreneurs." One is that they need to be much better at evangelizing their ideas and in the process of doing so words and statements such as “you know” and “like” should not be part of the pitch. Further, I found that some of the pitches were not rehearsed enough and others were too detailed and long, describing business operations minutia that was not necessary.
This point was brought home when one of the very successful VC’s present there said that he bases a lot of his decisions on the person that he will be funding: “Do I like him/her or not”, was his mantra.
If that is not a case for really performing well on stage, I don’t know what is.
I have gone to many of these over the years and it is a fascinating process that everyone in Innovation management should be exposed to; it presents us with a unique opportunity to experience a drastically different perspective and energy. It is, in short, a new ecosystem that needs to be understood well, specially if one works with young companies as I do.
I found that these entrepreneurs could also learn a thing or two from other – more corporately focused "intrepreneurs." One is that they need to be much better at evangelizing their ideas and in the process of doing so words and statements such as “you know” and “like” should not be part of the pitch. Further, I found that some of the pitches were not rehearsed enough and others were too detailed and long, describing business operations minutia that was not necessary.
This point was brought home when one of the very successful VC’s present there said that he bases a lot of his decisions on the person that he will be funding: “Do I like him/her or not”, was his mantra.
If that is not a case for really performing well on stage, I don’t know what is.
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