Tips for Pitching From Last Years Winner

In September 2017, after years of hard work and emotional investment, I was laid off from the startup I moved to Denver for. Three weeks later, I founded Sheets & Giggles™, because apparently I'm a glutton for punishment.

In September 2018, after a year of 16-hour days and very little sleep (ironic), I took home first place for S&G at Denver Startup Week's $95,000 pitch competition. I remember feeling incredibly validated in my choice to start our little pun-based company, and the cash and investment portions of the award were put to good use (read: went right into my pocket).

One year later, I'm proud to announce that this Thursday, September 19, I'm now a judge at the very same pitch competition (RSVP to watch the finals!)! Oh the turntables.

This year I'll join 4 other judges to decide which startup gets a much-needed boost, and which startups get fed to the lions.

I've been asked by Denver Startup Week to write some quick advice to share with this year's semifinalists, so I put together this stream of consciousness:

• Demonstrate traction, wins, and market validation above all else.
• Remove as many words from your slides as possible, and please for God's sake no bullet points. People can either listen to you or read; they can't do both.
• Don't hone in too much on "team team team" – I find that this is often a way for companies to gloss over little traction / other things to brag about during the pitch. Talk about the company's wins as much as possible, and maybe talk about the core founding team for 20 seconds tops.
• Show readiness – how will you use the prizes tomorrow?
• Win over the crowd. The judges will 100% be influenced by how the crowd reacts, so go for the big applause / laughter / "woooo!" moments to make them remember your pitch's high notes.
• Don't focus too much on the nitty gritty of your product unless it's truly revolutionary / life-saving / industry game-changing. Spend more time on the business model, traction, wins, and outlook.
• If you're confident about the model, literally just tell us / show your unit economics. Some of the most impressive decks I've ever seen have a slide that's devoted to margin breakdown, including acquisition cost, so the listeners can visualize how quickly you can grow given an influx of $X marketing spend.
• Like a job interview, understand the common questions you'll get asked by the judges after we hear your pitch, and be ready to absolutely crush those. Being succinct and confident during the Q&A is key, and you don't want to stumble over an answer or be long-winded in your response.
• If it's helpful, here's my 5-min pitch from Techstars demo night in April so you can see my pitch cadence.

Hope this helps! I cannot wait to hear all the finalists' pitches, and it should be a blast.

Also, new rule this year: the winner has to best me in hand-to-hand combat to claim the giant check. I've grown quite fond of the check this past year, so I hope the eventual winner brings their A-game and melee weapon of choice.

Hope to see you at Denver Startup Week this year! If you attend the pitch competition on Thursday please say hi!

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A big thank you to all of our local businesses who donated prize sponsors this year for the Pitch Competition, providing the support to boost the competing startups including highlight sponsors: Greenbrier Partners, GhostRanch Communications, PitchLab, Eldridge Law Firm, Holmes Consulting, and FusionAuth.