7 Huge Startup Pitch Competition Mistakes

7 Huge Startup Pitch Competition Mistakes

Con­sid­er­ing tak­ing part in a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion? Save your­self some time and embar­rass­ment by fol­low­ing some of these tips. Once you read this, make sure you also learn how to craft a com­pelling pitch deck that actu­al­ly works.

Win­ning a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion can make all the dif­fer­ence for your new busi­ness. In addi­tion to mas­sive expo­sure, it can bring hefty prize mon­ey and back­ing from sea­soned investors per­fect for your ven­ture.

Start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tions take place just about every­where, so find­ing one near you isn’t too hard.

Great Startup Pitch Competitions

Here are some of the best start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tions around. These are the ones you should real­ly try to get into:

• TechCrunch Dis­rupt — Held twice a year in the US and Europe, this $50,000 start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion fea­tures a Start­up Bat­tle­field where start­up lead­ers present a short pitch about their busi­ness.

• White Bull Sum­mits — Europe’s top tech­nol­o­gy and media lead­ers, entre­pre­neurs, inno­va­tors, investors, and vision­ar­ies gath­er here for the BullPen com­pe­ti­tion. Par­tic­i­pants will present their firms to a pan­el of straight-shoot­ing, hard-nosed experts who tell it just like it is.

• LeWeb Start­up Com­pe­ti­tion — Held in Paris, this pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion gives star­tups the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case their ideas before a high­ly influ­en­tial audi­ence.

• Pio­neers Chal­lenge — Fea­tur­ing a €100,000 seed invest­ment prize, this is a very pres­ti­gious start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion. It’s open to star­tups from all over the world.

• SXSW Accel­er­a­tor Start­up Com­pe­ti­tion — While the prizes for this start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion are rel­a­tive­ly small, the expo­sure and fund­ing poten­tial is tremen­dous. SXSW has helped launch social giants like Twit­ter and Foursquare before, yours could be next.

Remem­ber that these are only some of the biggest start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tions around. You may find oth­er reward­ing com­pe­ti­tions local­ly.

Now let’s move on to the meat of this arti­cle. How do you increase your chances of win­ning a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion?

Just fol­low this advice…

Startup Pitch Competition Mistake #1

Not Prepar­ing for the Q&A Ses­sion after the Pitch

Most start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tions fea­ture a pan­el of judges or investors that ask you ques­tions after your pre­sen­ta­tion. These ques­tions are actu­al­ly more impor­tant than the pitch itself… they also hap­pen to be pret­ty tough.

Can you pre­pare for every tough ques­tion they may ask? No. But you can clar­i­fy your objec­tives, demon­strate your log­ic, and know your data real­ly well.

One of the best strate­gies to win them over in the Q&A ses­sion is not to give away all the details dur­ing the pitch. If you’ve exhaust­ed all your data, you won’t have any left to serve as answers.

Dig deep and have as much data as you can about your mar­ket, com­peti­tors, and pro­jec­tions. Also, try to antic­i­pate tough ques­tions and fore­see­able objec­tions.

Present your pitch deck to a few knowl­edge­able friends before you take it to any com­pe­ti­tion. Have them ask you ques­tions. The hard­est they can think of.

Also, ask them to iden­ti­fy the weak­est points of your pre­sen­ta­tion. Often, these are the areas where you need to do more research or think hard­er about strate­gies and solu­tions to prob­lems.

Don’t believe me? The pre­sen­ter below starts off great until he ele­gant­ly crash­es dur­ing the Q&A ses­sion right around 9:58

Startup Pitch Competition Mistake #2

Not Know­ing Your KPI Met­rics, or Not Express­ing Them Right

Judges and investors want Key Per­for­mance Indi­ca­tors (KPI) that indi­cate how effec­tive­ly your start­up can achieve busi­ness objec­tives.

There are lots of KPIs around. You should focus on the ones that real­ly mat­ter for the start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion and your par­tic­u­lar busi­ness. Judges and investors don’t need all your KPIs to fig­ure out whether your start­up has a chance or not.

So what are the key KPIs you real­ly need to know before a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion?

• Cus­tomer Acqui­si­tion Cost (CAC) — The aver­age amount you have to spend to acquire a new cus­tomer.
• Cus­tomer Reten­tion Rate — Per­cent­age of cus­tomers who remain pay­ing cus­tomers for a peri­od of time.
• Life­time Val­ue (LV) — Net val­ue of a cus­tomer for your busi­ness.
• CAC to LV Ratio — A pow­er­ful indi­ca­tor of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of your com­pa­ny.
• CAC Recov­ery Time — Time nec­es­sary for a cus­tomer to cov­er CAC.
• Over­head — A mea­sure of your fixed expens­es.
• Burn Rate — Month­ly expense rate.
• Run­way — Num­ber of months before your com­pa­ny runs out of cash.
• Prof­it Mar­gin — How much you make for each prod­uct you sell.
• Con­ver­sion Rate — Indi­cates your abil­i­ty to sell prod­ucts.
• Gross Mer­chan­dise Vol­ume (GMV) — Over­all dol­lar val­ue of your sales.
• Month­ly Active Users (MAU) — Unique users who engage with your start­up in a month.

Once you have your KPIs, men­tion only the key ones. You need to know and under­stand them all, but dur­ing a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion, there’s not enough time for going through them all.

Use charts, graphs, and visu­al ele­ments to present your met­rics in a sim­ple, clear, and com­pelling way. When investors or judges want to learn more about a met­ric, they’ll ask.

Startup Pitch Competition Mistake #3

Cal­cu­lat­ing Expect­ed Returns for Investors

Many par­tic­i­pants in a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion make this mis­take. They think that they will impress investors. But it’s hard to get the num­bers right in the ear­ly life of a start­up.

Give them a big num­ber, and they’ll destroy your assump­tions with tough ques­tions you can’t answer at this stage. Give them a small num­ber, and you’ll just turn them off.

Investors in a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion like to cal­cu­late their own expect­ed returns. They do it very care­ful­ly, bring­ing into it their expe­ri­ence — some­thing most start­up own­ers just don’t have.

The bot­tom line here is sim­ple — don’t spend (too much) time wor­ry­ing about investor returns. Because that’s not some­thing they want you to care about.

A start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion is about inno­v­a­tive and sus­tain­able busi­ness ideas. It’s about giv­ing them a sol­id start­up pitch that catch­es their atten­tion. Focus on that rather than wor­ry­ing about investor returns.

Startup Pitch Competition Mistake #4

Top down Instead of Bot­tom up Approach to Mar­ket Siz­ing

This is a big one. How you present mar­ket size can make a big dif­fer­ence in any start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion. There are two approach­es, and one is a lot bet­ter than the oth­er.

The first goes like this… A research firm or oth­er, say, Nielsen, says that X ser­vice has a mar­ket size of about $25 mil­lion. This is okay, but it doesn’t paint the whole pic­ture.

It’s not very inspir­ing, either, because investors know oth­er busi­ness­es are already tap­ping into this mar­ket.

Try the bot­tom up approach instead… If the tar­get audi­ence for this ser­vice is X, and we can attract 10% of them, we’ll deliv­er the ser­vice Y times a month, which means a prof­it of Z.

With this approach, the num­bers will be small­er. You won’t be talk­ing of mil­lions in mar­ket size but of thou­sands in ser­vices and prof­its. It gives start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion judges and investors more accu­rate num­bers. There­fore, it makes for a more real­is­tic, and implic­it­ly more per­sua­sive, start­up pitch.

Anoth­er advan­tage of the bot­toms up approach in a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion is that it shows them you’ve done your research. If any­thing, there might be objec­tions with the ratios and prox­ies you used, which actu­al­ly is a good sign for you because it shows that they care.

One thing to remem­ber — a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion isn’t the place to be vague, broad, or gen­er­al. You have to be as spe­cif­ic as you can.

Startup Pitch Competition Mistake #5

 Not Talk­ing About the Com­pe­ti­tion (Enough)

What if you leave out com­peti­tors? After all, why should you both­er about them? It’s all about your brand, right?

Wrong. This is one of the biggest mis­takes you can make in a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion.

If you tell them you have no com­pe­ti­tion, they’ll think two things:

1. That you’re a rook­ie and haven’t researched your mar­ket. (Even the most amaz­ing­ly inno­v­a­tive star­tups face some com­pe­ti­tion).
2. That you’re aim­ing for a mar­ket nobody both­ers about because it doesn’t mat­ter

But what if you’ve real­ly done your research for the start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion? What if there aren’t any direct com­peti­tors?

Broad­en your hori­zons. Increase your scope. Pen­e­trate relat­ed mar­kets, if you have to. Investors at a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion like star­tups in com­pet­i­tive mar­kets. Because that com­pe­ti­tion is sure proof that the mar­ket is viable.

That doesn’t mean you have to focus too much on your com­peti­tors. Just make sure you men­tion them. It’s a healthy thing to do for your start­up.

Startup Pitch Competition Mistake #6

Get­ting the Pace Wrong

At a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion, you don’t want to give too many details, or too few. You don’t want to rush your pitch or pro­long it to the lim­it of their patience. And you def­i­nite­ly don’t want to run out of time if there is a time lim­it.

When you attend a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion, you have to do more than to present your busi­ness idea. You have to hold the atten­tion of your audi­ence. You have to engage them and even enter­tain them.

That’s a lot to do when you think of the few min­utes you usu­al­ly get for your start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion. There­fore, the pace and cadence of your pitch are cru­cial.

Here are some tips that help you get the pace right:

• Don’t read your start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion entry from a screen — you need to know it by heart and look your audi­ence in the eye as you present it.
• Focus on the key aspects of your pre­sen­ta­tion, not the details. Save the details for the Q&A ses­sion lat­er.
• Don’t present a pitch deck line by line. It’s bor­ing. Try instead to present the pre­sen­ta­tion so to speak, and engage the audi­ence with direct remarks in the process.
• Speak slow­ly and steadi­ly to con­vey con­fi­dence.

Rehears­ing your pre­sen­ta­tion in front of oth­ers before the start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion makes it per­fect.

Here’s a great exam­ple:

Startup Pitch Competition Mistake #7

Not Sav­ing the Best for Last

Whether we’re talk­ing about a small or a big start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion, the win­ner is often the pitch that makes the audi­ence enthu­si­as­tic.

Look at it this way. Investors have plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for invest­ing their mon­ey today. There are plen­ty of start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion entries.

But rel­a­tive­ly few of them man­age to gen­er­ate enthu­si­asm. Even if they are finan­cial­ly viable, most entries don’t inspire peo­ple to invest in them.

There’s a pow­er­ful strat­e­gy that can help you do that in a nat­ur­al and com­pelling way. It’s some­thing that mar­keters and sto­ry­tellers do all the time — sav­ing the best for last.

So give your start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion entry a con­clu­sion, and make it big. Make your call to action momen­tous… it doesn’t have to be over­ly dra­mat­ic, but leave an impact.

Final­ly, make sure you start small. Show your start­up pitch deck to small­er investors first. Bring it to small­er com­pe­ti­tions, if any are avail­able. This will help you fine-tune it for the big start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion you go to, the one that can real­ly make all the dif­fer­ence.

Need help prepar­ing for a start­up pitch com­pe­ti­tion? Swift­ly Dig­i­tal is a tech & dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing agency based in Los Ange­les that loves pitch decks. In fact, our decks have raised over $250,000 for our clients so far. Send an email to hello@swiftlydigital.com if you’re ready to get start­ed.

Also pub­lished on Medi­um.