Lets talk about Pitching

I was brought up with Chinese education, my English is always broken. So, when comes to pitching, preparation and the flow of presentation is very much important to me. I attended a Startup Garage recently hosted by Entrepreneur.my. One of the session talks about pitching for MDeC pre-seed grant, conducted by one of the successful grant recipients, Mr. Keng Yew, from SocialWalk.com. I total agreed with what Keng Yew has presented, and I felt very insightful for new grant applicants (to download his slides, click here).

A few months back, I was helping a friend with their grant application, great business model with great proposal written. However, they failed due to poor presentations. A brief recipe of what you should be present:

  1. Problem – What is the current problems in the market which you found it as an opportunity ?
  2. Solution – The solutions to the problem. What can your system do?
  3. Product – The main features of your product that provides the solution.
  4. Demand – Show them the demand from the market. Tell them this is what the market wants. show them letter of interest.

I believe most of the you might have known of the above recipe. but what you have not notice which kengyew has pointed out, and I totally agreed with that. Things you should get notice for your presentation:

  1. Don’t put your panels to sleep nor giving them a headache:
    • This is one of the mistakes that my friend did. The panels are listening to more than 20 presentation a day, they are tired, sleepy. So, Stop listing all the features that what your system can do.
    • Example, you are pitching to built a Toilet bowl with a system that is able to analyse human health condition by examine the faeces (your stool).
    • Hence, you do not list down every single feature of the toilet bowl from flush tank, design, flap seat, ass washer, can do this, can do that and bla bla bla bla bla etc. How boring was that!!!
    • All you need is to find out your few main unique feature, and focus on that only. the rest, mention in brief.
    • if you list down too many features, it looks more like a rojak system instead of a uniquely defined product, and may open up more problems and question for the panels to haunt you down.
  2. Tell Stories
    • Imagine, every morning when you are sitting on your toilet bowl, there is a nice sweet voice with background music, reporting on your health condition, advising you the amount of water you should drink, print and plan the type of food you should eat. Apart from that, if your ass get too numb, you get to comfort your ass with the massage system”,
    • rather than …“The toilet bowl that we proposed will have voice reporting system, a built-in speaker, a printer that will list down the amount of water should drink and the food to consume. and also, a built-in X2131 latest model of massage system.”..ZZZzzzzz …. who cares about X2131 model.
    • I am not a good story teller, that’s why I plan for my presentation with stories. Preparation is needed.
  3. Is all about Emotion:
    • You don’t present like you have just gotten up from bed or your dog just died last night.
    • You need to show PASSION and EXCITEMENTS. Give me the money or i will ….~!

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    Life is interesting, its all about experimenting, trial and errors and self improvments. This blog is all about my personal experience. I am full with ideas, and i will achieve every one of them step by step.

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