How to Organise High-Performing Startup Pitching Contests

By: Tetiana Hanchar Tetiana Hanchar
Date: Apr 11, 2018
Comment: 0
Category: Awards Management

Sharing your precious startup ideas with friends, not to mention hundreds of investors, can be frightening. With new startup pitching contests popping up everywhere on a daily basis, it’s critical to make sure that your event is the one where the most enlightening speeches and innovation take place.

So where do we start? The two things that should be on your to-do list before the launch are audience analytics and goal setting.

Find out more about your audience

Getting a startup pitching event right means implementing a program that satisfies different audience segments, from angel investors to startup founders. With that thought in mind, you have to develop a working strategy of multi-layered targeting. In other words, think about how you can marry the idea of a contest with the intents of investors, businesspeople, judges, and startup founders who attend your contest. Here are the basic mechanisms that work well with each audience category:

Collect strategies that have already worked. There are many event organisers who know how to play the startup game right. Have a look around. Focus on startup pitching events that generate a lot of buzzes online, and target the audience segments similar to yours. You don’t have to copy someone’s strategy, but you should explore the tone used by startup event organisers in promo campaigns, check out the most popular venues, etc.

Build custom surveys. Approach people whom you want to be a part of your event, and ask them for honest feedback. In his article about startup pitching events, a seasoned angel investor, Dr. Aniruddha Malpani, expresses his concern about organisers asking startups to provide too much data in a short amount of time: “Quite frankly, after listening to two or three pitches, the investor’s brain gets fried, and all the pitches start blurring into one another.” Obviously, such firsthand insights can help you hone your strategy so that you avoid some of the common mistakes that others make. By asking each target segment to fill out your custom survey, you can collect actionable data for building more profitable events.
Learn from your own experiences. The most valuable lessons are those that are based on your own experience. Use analytics tools to record your failures and top achievements, and then transform them into reports that you can put on the shelf and keep till the next event.

Define your goals

Start with your own objectives, and then move on to the goals that your target audience may potentially pursue. The chances are high that you’ll see that the goals of investors and startups don’t always coincide. While business owners attend pitching contests to find talent for their projects, startups are, in most cases, looking for investors. This means you have to ensure everyone gets what he or she expects.

The good old SMART goals that reflect the needs of startup founders and investors will be a perfect fit here. Here’s how you can approach the process of goal setting in a clever way:

Pick your star verbs. With the right verb in your mind, you’re halfway to success. Think about what you want to achieve with your startup pitching in terms of verbs like increase, improve, boost, and similar terms. Is it all about raising capital? Or maybe getting your brand name out there is the end goal.
See what it takes. Setting a goal is not enough; you should also understand what it will take to achieve it. Break your objectives into several categories, based on achievability. The goals with the lowest achievability potential will have to be substituted with relevant objectives that you can reach.
Add some networking. What many event organisers tend to forget is facilitating the conditions for networking at startup pitching contests. Through meaningful onsite interaction, you can help both startups and businesses maximize their profits. Because of this, you might consider creating a separate list of “networking goals” that reflect what can be achieved through meet and greets.

How to organise startup pitching contests

From a cold, icy Slush to a hot Web Summit PITCH, there are quite a lot of startup pitching events that will most likely ring a bell with you. To pick the perfect pitch for your pitch contest (pun intended), follow the guide below:

Choose a contest name

Take a moment to focus on your associations with the word “LeWeb.” Right. France and the Internet. As one of the largest tech conferences in Europe, LeWeb brings the most promising startups together in one place every year to help them build influential connections. From the name of the contest, you can probably predict two things: the main event theme and the geographical location. By picking a contest name that speaks for itself, you take the first step to perfect public recognition.

Choose a venue

A good location, enough space for everyone, focus on a stage, and a pitch deck—these are the must-have ingredients.

Food & drinks

The question “Do we need refreshments at an event?” pops up in the checklist of every contest organiser. While no one can give you a yes or no answer, there are many factors that you can rely upon when making a decision. For instance, at 24-hour hackathons, you should provide participants with at least three meals during the day; three-hour meetings can be flavoured with some delicious cheese and wine, etc.

Lights for the contest

Putting a spotlight on a speaker can have a direct impact on the level of engagement with a pitch. From pixel-mapping to real-time editing, there’s a huge number of lighting techniques that can shape the way pitches will be consumed.

Invite judges, startups, and investors

Yes, you need personalised invitations for every category. Depending on who an invitee is, the key points that have to be included in a message will vary:

Choose prizes
You need to organise pitches in a way that enables the best engagement possible. Whether you have multiple pitching sessions running simultaneously or just one at a time, create a comprehensive schedule that you can post on a contest management with Judgify website, use in email invitations, or embed on event apps.

Apart from recognition and excellent media coverage, the winners of a startup competition at TechCrunch Disrupt win $50,000 that they can then invest in the growth of their business ideas. At LeWeb, it’s more about getting the opportunities for cooperation with established industry players. Relying on the theory about three core attributes of successful contest prizes, pick something that is relevant, worthy, and awesome.

Create a marketing plan for contest promotion

A super-duper important task for everyone who wants to organise pitches that convert, building a marketing plan is something that should occupy your mind before, during, and after an event. Here are a few simple tips on how to advertise your contests correctly:

Have a social media schedule to enable consistent posting.
Create content in advance.
Use software tools that allow for automated posting.
Make use of shares and referrals.
Follow up on special offers.

Conclusion

Organising startup pitching contests is basically the process of finding the right outlets for brilliant business ideas. Explore the values that startups cherish, and find a way to align them with investors’ intents through efficient goal setting, tech-driven execution, and targeted follow-up activities.