Jan Schultink is in Iceland on holiday, he contacted me a couple of months back and asked if he could spend some time with the Startup Reykjavik Teams to mentor them for their presentation for the upcoming Demo Day. I obviously said YES! and connected him to Kristjan. For those of you who don’t know the first batch of Startup Reykjavik will present to a invited list of investors on Demo Day on August 17th. Jan has blogged about it here. I wrote about pitching to an investor. Jan used to work for McKinsey, a strategy consulting firm and I have been very impressed with the firm and the work they do.

Idea Transplant: The Art of Pitching VCs

The fact that he wants to teach us some of the tricks of the trade is huge and I am taking advantage of that. I am planning to be there. Startup Reykjavik organizing team has made it into an open presentation, so if you have an hour and want to participate show up at  Armuli 13 around 11:00. I think we will learn something. I truly believe one has to take time to build beautiful presentations but it is a balance. I have seen enough pitches to know which ones stick and which don’t. The usual format of a demo day is 6 to 7 minutes for a startup to pitch their idea, product and traction. Although it seems like 6 to 7 minutes is not a lot a time, believe me it is more than enough to get an investor to want to meet with you. I have been telling every entrepreneur who would listen that the key to the pitches is to get a follow up meeting. Investment decisions especially in a startup is a lengthy process, you as the entrepreneur need to make sure that you are providing all the decision point data to the investor so the cycle gets shorter. Having someone like Jan help you get that message and content organized properly is extremely important. Check out some of the presentations that he has prepared. They are impressive.

Idea Transplant: Six minute startup pitch

Oh, I forgot to mention what the 2 ways to get an investor meeting… if you have figured it out by now then you get 10 points! otherwise read on:

  1. Presentation has to be beautiful and professional ~ Memorable
  2. Pitch the problem, sell the problem and leave the audience with a bit of your solution and why they need to talk to you more ~ Make them want more

There are obviously many micro strategies to implement the above two big ideas, I am hoping to learn a lot listening to Jan tomorrow.

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