#practiceyourpitch

Pitch Practice Friday Jan 9 2015

Wonderful start to the new year with a great session of Pitch Practice.  Remember, your 30 second pitch always has the following elements, in whatever order suits you best: Your name (say it clearly and boldly) Your company name (if you have one) The problem you’re solving (the most important point!) Your solution (e.g., “we are uber for unicorn saddles”) Who pays you money? (we call these…

Wonderful start to the new year with a great session of Pitch Practice.  Remember, your 30 second pitch always has the following elements, in whatever order suits you best:

Your name (say it clearly and boldly)

Your company name (if you have one)

The problem you're solving (the most important point!)

Your solution (e.g., "we are uber for unicorn saddles")

Who pays you money? (we call these "customers")

What do you need? (the "ask")

We also reviewed two very important points to remember as you share your pitch in front of any audience:

Anyone can steal your idea; nobody can steal your execution of your idea

Focus on the problem; make it personal to your audience

Here's who pitched today:

Simeon Woods - stadeleague - linkedin for professional soccer players; there are over 265M registered professional soccer players with FIFA today, and 375,000 soccer clubs, and no marketplace for players, agents, and clubs to find one another.

Sean Gerling - Matlen Silver - New branch in ATL of NJ based company, helps you find the right tech talent for a growing market with a deep pipeline of talent for HR, VP. Looking for connections.

John Creasy - Knox Hacklabs - The solve physical & electronic problems in the cycling and triathlon community, and are looking for connections in plastics, metals, textile industries.

After some frustration from meetup.com about removing Pitch Practice from their service - half a dozen people gave me their condolences and lamented that I was "shutting down Pitch Practice - we had the biggest turnout ever.  Big na-na-na-boo-boo to meetup.com, and thanks to Twitter, Blogger, and the ATV Facebook group for easily replacing the meetup service.

21 attendees heard and helped 7 great pitches at today's @pitch_practice! Thanks to everyone who attended & pitched. pic.twitter.com/iRyhXeJCg5 — Kevin Sandlin (@KEVIN8R) May 16, 2014

That was lesson #1 from this week's pitch practice: if something isn't working, don't be afraid to change it.  Meetup.com was getting a few dozen RSVPs each week, maybe 3 or 4 of which were actually attending Pitch Practice on Fridays. Here's who pitched.

Relate.ly - Matt Kress pitched this new service that creates a visual mapping of your client relationships as tracked on social media and email.  

Parkent Cycles - Secure locking storage terminals for your bicycles.

Diane Deseta - Summer coding and design camp for at-risk middle school students in June at Sandy Springs Middle School

JustPaintMyHouse.com - Erez Weinstein is fixing the hideous battle of scheduling and getting estimates from quality paint contractors by offering guaranteed fixed pricing and appointments to paint the inside of your house.

FrankEinstein - Chris Turner, student at The Iron Yard, is learning to code so he can build a service that enables big brands to challenge students to create their brand designs or products, to alleviate the chronic methodology of years of consumptive education in our schools.

Frogtoon Media - Yassin couldn't find any Moroccan music on Spotify or Pandora, so he made a partnership with YouTube and created Frogtoon media to offer international flavored music to everyone around the globe. They have over 1M users!

Better Charities - Matthew Marshall is bringing transparency to every dollar you donate to your charity of choice.

This portion of the HIVE gathering last night was great, not only because I got to judge and pick the winner, but also because it demonstrated the grand importance of being able to answer the simple, common question, "What does your company do?"  That is why I run Pitch Practice. However, after what I saw last night, I may have to change the way Pitch Practice is run to get the best results!  Here's what went down. On the HIVE gathering event schedule, this segment is called "Word Play".  That's accurate, but not nearly the full story.  As I mentioned in my recap of the HIVE gathering, we all sat at tables pretty randomly. Those tables became product creative teams during the 20 minute segment they called Word Play.  The task? Create a product/service offering based on one of three nonsensical words.

That's right: Fundeedo, Flyby, and Ferrris (with three Rs).  Each team had 15 minutes to create a fake (or maybe not) business and then give a 30-second pitch to explain exactly what that business does.  Here are the rather incredible results. Twelve 30-second pitches created in less than 20 minutes, and only 2 of them exceeded the rather well enforced 30-second time limit.  Amazing.

Flyby Drones deliver candy, schwag, or party favors to your local event.

Fundeetos: when Doritos and Cheetos meet, they create a light, fluffy, fun treat!

Marty McFlyby transcends time with the Time Travel Hoverboard.

Fundeedo: a social app to meet the needs of people all around you: Create Fun, Share, and do a good deed when you find someone in need near you.

The Flyby Bib, for national Top Gun day, so you don't spill your coffee when an F-14 does an unauthorized flyby and the pattern is full.

Ferrris let's you take a day off when you hate your job to do someone else's job, find your passion, and discover what you are called to do.

Fundeedo: the Help Mob for Good to mob people in need with help from the community.

Flyby: the social app to turn your layover into a "playover" by connecting you with other people on layover in the airport.

Fundeedo - Fund. Eat. Do. A monthly membership club to local restaurants, cooking classes, and dinner clubs, 30% of proceeds go to local produce farming.

Ferrris: The social app for collaboration & competition to remotely responding to needs of your community.

Flyby the seat of your pants, but make them Big Boy or Big Girl pants by making your Flyby a life-changing adventure!

Ferrris: Fully Energizing Really Really Really Introverted People. Reinvent yourself.

Here's the recap from last Friday's rather raucous session of Pitch Practice. When you have an open meetup, you just never know who's gonna show or what they're gonna pitch, do you?

NOTE: Rumors of the demise of Pitch Practice are greatly exaggerated, mainly by meetup.com. Pitch Practice is no longer being organized at meetup.com. Follow us here, the Pitch Practice blog, and @Pitch_Practice on Twitter to stay up to date.

Dan Smigrod of We Get Around Atlanta was kind enough to give us a demo of his 360* sphere photography.  Consider this his 5-minute pitch, and it was quite a demo.  From setup to hi-res 360-degree sphere picture in less than 5 minutes. Here's the actual shot he took. For best results, view this on an iPad or at least an iPhone.  Mind-blowing stuff.

Diane Deseta of UX Mentors pitched the UX solution for startups: affordable, qualified, well-trained UX interns for all your startup UX work. Matt Kress of Relate.ly delivered a great pitch for his startup, which measures, scores, and visualizes client relationships through social media contact and email. Their market entry point is consulting firms, who require deep relationships with their clients for the highest opportunity for success. Brett Thompson pitched a concept. See? You never know what anyone is going to pitch, so bring it! Brett presented his hypothesis that Atlanta sucks at branding our great city. "The reason," he said, "that Hollywood is coming to Atlanta is because is the Green City of the South."  Brett presented the idea that Atlanta completely re-brand as such, and invest in making the inner city of Atlanta even greener. Barry Gray also pitched a concept: water is scarce and becoming more so in many parts of the world. How can one or more NGOs or other non profit make the distribution of water more available in those areas that struggle to maintain sufficient drinking water?  Barry's pitch was a great example that, while your idea may be compelling and your pitch passionate, your audience may not like it.  Barry started off with "Let's make an OPEC for water!" Matthew Marshall pitched "Better Charity", which solves the issue of distrust of charities by their donors by enabling visual impact of donations through technology.  Matthew is a rookie at Pitch Practice, and did not intend to pitch, but he nailed it.  Wouldn't you like to know what your charitable donations were spent on? Diane Deseta pitched again, this time in an effort to recruit volunteer entrepreneurial speakers to visit Sandy Springs Middle School this summer between June 4 - 25 to speak to at-risk kids attending a design and coding workshop.  She got 3 volunteers, myself included. Good pitch!  More info on this event:

Sandy Springs Charter Middle School is hosting a summer coding camp for At-Risk middle school children. We are looking for volunteer professionals to stop by for 30 minutes to give a brief talk about technology and their profession.  The camp will be held between June 4th and June 25th.  If anyone is interested in participating please contact Diane Deseta, [email protected].