Your Pitch Sucks

There are just WAY too many Moes in Atlanta. I can never decide where to eat. Curse you Moes Corp!

Lance

I can assure you that PitchCamp is indeed active. We'll be sending out an email blast soon but our next one is February 24th.

In terms of need, our PitchCamp is differentiated by the fact that it's intended to help entrepreneurs gain the most beneift from StartupLounge events. I'm unaware of other events in town that focus on the 30-second elevator pitch.

I think your points on coordination are well-taken; they are hard to implement in practice. It's hard enough for volunteers to find the time to organize events at all, let alone coordinate with the myriad organizations out there. If I were to take the time to call/email/tweet everyone contributing to the community before organizing an offering, I'd spend so much time doing that, that the offering itself would never happen.

If we had a true community billboard where all these events were aggregated, (and such billboards were widely read, utilized by most of the organizations that matter, and could be added to by anyone without the need for an intermediary) I could see the time-effectiveness of coordination. I know of no such resource but am willing to be educated.

I can tell you this - that StartupLounge has always had the goal of working itself out of a job. In any event, all of our events are oversubscribed. I interpret that as a signal that our events, including PitchCamp, are in demand. If anything, we think we are seeing an improvement in the quality of companies that have a real chance of success participating in our events. It takes time to establish that credibility.

I think the market can sort itself out. In the short term, there may be redundancies but in the long term, if people will attend those events they find most helpful and those that people don't will over time fall by the wayside.

Are there specific events that you think have outlived their usefulness? (Feel free to include StartupLounge events - we can handle constructive criticism - but I make no promises about not being "thrown under the bus" in retaliation! :)

-- mike

Paul: Bad analogy. Moe's, like most franchises, have oversight of franchisee location to prevent the exact problem that I am describing.

Mike: If PitchCamp is quarterly then that makes 31 such events, one every 11.77 days of the year.

Lance: I will use a different analogy then. Think of pitch events like open mike nights at coffee shops. You're saying if we had fewer open mike nights, we'd have a better music scene?

The more opportunities for musicians (or entrepreneurs) to work on their craft, the more likely it is that good ones will rise to the top.

BTW, I take issue with events not designed only to help entrepreneurs, but designed to make money for the organizers. Ala Startup Atlanta. We need to steer people away from those.

Few people go to coffee shops to listen to bad music and even fewer musicians are able to have a successful and financially rewarding careers.

If there is an event every 11.77 days of the year, so what? If people are attending these events, that seems to be a signal that many people find them useful - or at least entertaining.

-- mike

I think you managed to argue against your own point. Most of the small events like Startup Gauntlet, Run it by the Pros, and Pitchcamp are designed specifically to hone your pitch for investor presentations or large public pitch events like Startup Riot, Venture Atlanta, etc.
Sure there aren't a lot of investors and other folks at these small events, but that's not the point - the point is to practice your pitch and get good questions and feedback. Having more people in the audience isn't going to help the startup - you can only get reasonable feedback from a handful of people anyway.

In that respect, it's helpful that there are more events rather than less - it ensures more startups are able to get help and feedback on their pitch. If there were fewer events, there would be less opportunities to do so. I think it's great that an entrepreneur in Atlanta has so many venues to get help and practice their pitch.

Dave: I think the best way to hone your pitch for public pitch events is via the deeper engagement I referred to yesterday via one on one type of coaching and in very small supportive groups. Yesterday I spoke of deeper engagement, today the point is more about density.

I'd agree 1v1 coaching is a great way to improve your pitch but at some point you just need to get in front of a room of people and give it straight. Ideally that first time won't be in a room full of investors.

@lance: Despite the fact the majority of actual practicing entrepreneurs appeared to agree with my assessment I was called harmful and ignorant.

Come on, a handful of your comments constitutes a valid and reliable polling mechanism? Really?

Anyway, there were inaccuracies in your post which I was pointing out and that you acknowledged. I didn't call you harmful (the opposite in fact, I praised your efforts in the comments) but I questioned if your publishing those inaccuracies was actually not more harmful than that which you complained about. Additionally I didn't call you ignorant, I asked you to be please get to know the value of each event and it’s associated organization because those inaccuracies implied you didn't.

I'm not targeting you personally, I have great respect for you and appreciate your efforts in the community. In general I believe you've probably had a more positive impact locally than most anyone. I was challenging your take on the subject and its potential for causing people to judge people's efforts wrongly; I'd hope we could challenge each other on facts and issues and not take it personally. You are effectively a new source for the startup community and I'd think you'd want your facts to be as accurate as possible, no?

@lance: and how a little thoughtful coordination might be of help.

I completely agree with that. However that aspect of your post yesterday read like an afterthought, at least to me.

@paul: BTW, I take issue with events not designed only to help entrepreneurs, but designed to make money for the organizers. Ala Startup Atlanta. We need to steer people away from those.

Are you serious? Really?!? Are you saying that the charging of $10 for an event with 65 people (or even 200 people) means that Startup Atlanta's goal is to make money for it's organizers?

Let's do the math: 100 (avg) people x $10 x 10 per year = $10,000 prior to expenses. Do you really think we're in this for the money?!?! I can make that in 1 month of a contract development job without expenses. The $10 is about covering expenses and ensuring people who RSVP are more likely to attend (it's a best practice that Meetup.com recommends.)

If I wanted to make lots of money I sure wouldn't be doing this, I'm doing this because I want to and think I can help the Atlanta Startup Community.

So should we really steer clear of StartupRiot because he charges $45 per person and will probably have 500 people there? If we charged $100 to attend one 2 hour event maybe, or $500 like Venture Atlanta then maybe you'd have a point. But $10? Seriously?!?

Your comment would be like me warning people not get involved with TAG because their charge $245 per year for membership or TAG/ATDC Entrepreneurs because they charge $20 and because they use it to pay "the organizers" Tino, Melanie, et. al. a salary.

Worse your comments would be like me warning people not to get involved with ATDC because they charge companies $49 and they consume tax dollars which pays the organizers (you, Lance, et. al.) a salary.

That's just crazy talk. Why?

But it's probably my fault. I've not made time yet to make sure you fully understand what Startup Atlanta is doing, what we are charging for, and why. I'm going to sign up for your ATDC office hours so we can discuss.

-Mike

I think this is looking at the situation from the wrong perspective, top-down. As in "if I were centrally planning a startup economy, how many events would we have and where?" The better question is bottom-up: "How many potential founders are not exposed to the local startup economy?" Why not keep stirring until we get a couple more big wins? After all, those of us who aren't in the business of going to every event (e.g. because we're busy launching) simply don't go to all the events. Problem solved.

Separately, the Bay area (or Boston) is not much larger than Atlanta population-wise, and I'm sure they have a ton more events per capita. So as more startups are successful here, we should expect the number of events to go up, not down.

Mr. Schinkel:

The post was entitled Force of Harm?

Main Entry: ig·no·rant
Pronunciation: \ˈig-n(ə-)rənt\
Function: adjective
Date: 14th century
2 : unaware, uninformed

I stand by what I typed.

@lance - My comments were focused on what you published, the intent was not to attack you. Again, please don't take my comments personally.

all this banter the past two days is pointless b/c the real problem is there are not enough investors in the ATL willing to take significant risks. you can't bootstrap the next foursquare, twitter, Zynga, etc.

Mike, Startup Riot does not charge presenters. And I would encourage you to adopt the same principle for #OnStage presenters at your monthly events.

Lance, you are right on about there being way too many events. Having so many presents a myriad of problems.

1. Quality dilution. You get only a handful of true, quality entrepreneurs at any given event. At speaking events, the caliber of the speakers suffers greatly due to this as well.

2. Newcomers to the scene have zero idea which events are good, which are bad, and which are downright evil due to the sheer number of options presented.

3. It prevents investors from attending because they simply don't have the time to spend one night a week (although I think they probably should make the time) at an event which is mostly likely a waste of time.

I have other complaints as well, but these three are the core.

@Paul - I'm as against pay-for-pitch events as you are but the idea that a $10 RSVP fee would be viewed the same as pay-for-pitch events that charge $500 to $18,000 to pitch simply would not have occurred to me. Yes I asked presenters to RSVP for #OnStage so they'd be on the list of attendees but it wasn't a conscious plan to "make money off presenters." We were busy pulling the event together for launch and weren't thinking about those details. Rest assured we won't miss that detail next month.

The most valuable event I've been to... I'd say there were two of them, and neither was about Startups.

I was introduced to Cloud Computing by John Willis's cloud computing group, thanks to a heads up by Sanjay at an Open Coffee. That led to an obsessive interest in cloud computing, which drove my career thereafter.

I met Don Brown and Brad Anderson at BarCamp - I'd never known data geeks before. They introduced me to mapreduce and Hadoop, and I was hooked thereafter.

Those two paths are driving my career, and they'll be driving my next company. These random pings and pongs matter, and for me its been the technical groups that have really paid off.

My apologies to Mike Schinkel and Startup Atlanta. I made a negative comment without really understanding exactly what #OnStage at StartupAtlanta really is. A chance to demo within the club. Not a pitch event. So, go and be part of what could be another great part of the Atlanta startup scene.

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