Pitching Fits

The good news: I filtered through almost 400 of the MIT100k Elevator Pitch Competition entries to the top 60, then placed into the top 12. This let me pitch my clean energy idea to 500 people live and I hear that the video will be seen by a few thousand. Unfortunately, I didn't place in the top 3, so I won no money. At the time, it felt like crushing defeat but I'm trying to look on the positive side and call a top-12 placement an accomplishment.

Here's what I think brought my team to the top:

• Our low-cost/high-effectiveness desalination idea is easy to understand
• It has a clear, profitable business model
• The judges rated me as top 5% in "connects with the audience" and "charisma".

I walked out of the opening round feeling good about the pitch and its delivery.

Then came the finals night, which didn't go as well. What I'd do differently next time:

• I reworked the pitch based on feedback from the judges in the preliminaries. Their feedback was useful, but the pitch became overstuffed with an "all things to all people" problem.
• I did not connect with the audience. My delivery was uncharacteristically nervous and stilted. I need to reach deeper into that theatrical background and force myself to be ON regardless of whatever else is happening.

We'll be back at the Executive Summary contest in a few weeks. Until then, it's time to get back to interviewing potential customers.

Entrepreneurship: The Flip

I'm at Startup Bootcamp listening to Mick Mountz of Kiva Systems talk about his early experiences with the company. (They make a way-cool automated material handling system which turns warehouses and distribution centers into a robotic ballet.) His step 1 in a startup is (of course) "get a whiteboard and a business card." With a good idea and some customer-funded development, this eventually lets you change the world.

Step zero, though, is something I had never heard before. He calls it "The Flip". It's the moment when you decide "fuck it, I'm doing this." After the flip, he answered his phone "kiva systems". He had no product, no customers, no staff, and hadn't even incorporated. But it became real in his head.

I have heard talks on every detail of entrepreneurship from inception to funding to exit. But this is the first time anyone has talked about something like The Flip. I like the intentionality of this concept. It feels like there needs to be a ceremony for this.