Pitch Practice is a weekly meetup to help startup entrepreneurs practice and perfect their 30-second and 3-minute pitch to investors, prospects, partners, and anyone else who asks, “What does your startup do?” Their fearless leader, Kevin Sandlin, wrote the rundown below of the pitches from June 27.
Read through Kevin’s recap and if an idea really melts your butter help these folks out with your expertise and network.
- Thad Oviatt from Parkent Cycles delivered his best pitch yet. Parkent Cycles makes secure bicycle parking systems, helping to reduce the $3B/year bike theft number. Chad has a working prototype, and is raising $100k to launch a pilot program. Chad needs investors and IT infrastructure support.
- Keith Duncan from Built By Keith made 2 pitches after learning from the first attempt that you cannot possibly pitch 3 completely different products in an elevator pitch. Keith has Team Money Machine – teach teens to be financially independent; camera stabilizer; phone cradle. Turns out, his phone cradle is patented, fits any phone for any surface, desk, or car (dash or visor). Keith needs investors and introductions for strategic alliances. So, if you have multiple products, pick one. You can’t pitch multiple products in 30 seconds. Pick the low hanging fruit, and know your TAM (total addressable market).
- Chris Turner (recent Iron Yard Ruby on Rails grad!) of FrankEinstein is enabling kids to have creative portfolios when they graduate. Needs introductions to branded companies.
- Ryan Snodgrass is also a Ruby Developer from TIY, and built his own MVP: LiQo shows you how to make cocktails with what you already have in your liquor cabinet and fridge. What do you do with this?!? Social. Contest. Crowdsource recipes. Share recipes with friends and bars and bartenders instantly. Ryan is open to all options with this product, and seeks product and marketing folks for advice.
- Brian White has created Docs Dock to protect docs from using unsecured texting, which is a violation of the HIPAA law. Brian is raising $1M. HIPAA compliant WhatsApp for Physicians. 70% of docs text today, in clear violation of HIPAA, despite min $50k fine for doing so. Docs Dock solves this massive problem.
- Matt Vigilotti of Parlay aims to bring back the time tested economic tool known as bartering. One mans trash is another man’s treasure. Get people in a community free of financial barriers to let them meet and trade items. Seeking $200k to build it. From “parliez”, french for an agreement between 2 people. Social media community based bartering.
- Chris Turner (same one above) is launching 10 Rocket to build MVPs in Ruby in 10 business days or less for $5k. Needs leads. Huge need in Atlanta, where developers are scarce and expensive, so ideas die before they get to MVP.
- Dr. Barbara Ann Searle, Chiropractor, used a rhyme! OK, she called it a rap, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We agreed she needed to slow it down, and add a call to action. Dr. Searle is looking for clients! During Dr. Searle’s pitch, we learned that what one calls ‘sugar daddy’, another calls “investor”.
[Photo Credit: http://cdn.fansided.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/295/files/2014/02/050913ashley-thomas2.jpg]
