For better or for worse, some small things can make you look like a beginner when pitching to VCs. During my time at Square Peg as a senior associate, I’ve seen plenty of things founders and startups do well, but also don’t, during their pitches. So here are my top five things to avoid –… Read more »
Three Australian startups have been chosen from more than 3000 applications globally to take part in the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield event at Disrupt in San Francisco this week. AI-based marketing B2B Rammp, fashion tech venture Theodore, and fintech Cape will follow in the footsteps of unicorn alumni such as DropBox, Cloudflare and FitBit in taking… Read more »
The annual ARENA Renewables Startup Showcase is heading to Melbourne this year, with applications now open for startups interested in taking part. Pioneering startup network Innovation Bay and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) have teamed up again for the fourth showcase, which takes place on Wednesday, November 1, at Cargo Hall in Melbourne. They’re looking for early… Read more »
In this essay, we are imagining a pitch from an early stage deep tech company, probably still working inside a university. An investor red flag might not be obvious to a founder. Why would it? They build up over years as signals of weakness and they are best avoided. Knowing what they are makes it possible to… Read more »
Eight startups founded or led by women will pitch this week for the chance to represent Australia on the global stage as part of the She Loves Tech Global Startup Competition. Now in its third year in Australia, seven-year-old She Loves Tech is a global platform committed to closing the funding gap for female entrepreneurs… Read more »
The Commonwealth Bank’s venture-scaling arm, x15ventures, has selected four payments startups as the finalists for its Xccelerate22 program. The four – Paytron, YouPay, Cape and Persollo – were chosen from 16 fintechs chosen to take part in the Xccelerate Community Day a fortnight ago, going on to take part in a a deep-dive session known as the Pathway to… Read more »
Industry dinosaurs like me can still remember when there was no such thing as a startup pitch competition. But times have changed: the glaciers have retreated, bipedal mammals have become the dominant life form, and there are now more startup pitch competitions each year than coffee shops near Wynyard Station. Good for startups, right? Yes… Read more »
Before you start pitching, roleplay the investor perspective Pitches need to be given from the perspective of the investor. These things are too often forgotten The investor’s job is to make a financial return for their investors. They get thousands of pitches per year. This means they are distracted and also that they’ve probably heard… Read more »
At an accelerator demo day, nobody comes planning to invest in all the startups in the cohort. The goals are to sort the wheat from the chaff, and to consider whether to begin a dialogue with the best of the startups pitching. What if you don’t believe you’re the best in your cohort on the… Read more »
Welcome to our new column by Main Sequence Ventures partner Phil Morle. Every fortnight Morle will share his wisdom and insights with Startup Daily readers and also discuss it on the Startup Daily show. His first column is part of the Venture Capital Primer for Scientists series, based on hundreds of workshops he’s given during… Read more »
When an investor asks a founder to reveal their financial model, they are looking for the best possible attempt to provide a consistent, financial representation of the expected performance of the startup. It consists of well thought out projections about the future of the business, and a properly structured, understandable, and dynamic spreadsheet with easy-to-read… Read more »
Inventory forecasting software StockTrim achieved international sales in the UK, Australia and US immediately after launching in 2017. It’s been growth ever since, and in 2020 the Kiwi company pitched for seed funding to scale up. StockTrim came out successful – oversubscribed, in fact. The fund raise required three in-person pitches, seven Zoom pitches and… Read more »
The Pitch Doctor, with Cheryl Mack, Head of Community at Stone & Chalk, is a new column we’ve launched after she said the notorious Fyre Festival had one of the best pitch decks she’s seen. Fyre Fest raised $36 million from investors, but was a logistics disaster and led to its founder being jailed for… Read more »
Each week, the Giant Leap Fund receives an average of 20 pitches from startups across Australia. That means we’ll see over 1,000 decks this year, each typically over 10 slides long, for a total exceeding 10,000 in slides. I review each and every one of them. This is because we know that running a startup… Read more »
Pitch competitions are an ecosystem darling for a number of reasons. They provide startups with additional opportunities for exposure and capital and help ensure founders can effectively communicate their business in a short amount of time, including to audiences that might not be familiar with their industry or sector. They also provide a way for… Read more »
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