What’s Up Pitches?

Founders' Club

Brydon

I work on 20Skaters, ThreeFortyNine, Ontario Startup Train and a few others. My vanity site is brydon.me.



[Note: Cross posted with shiftMode]

What does Banana Tax, Mailman Boots, and Fire Extinguisher Guitar have in common? They were all pitched last night at ThreeFortyNine as real businesses. A bunch of us got together and played a version of Dave McClure’s half baked last night and it worked.

If you can craft a compelling pitch in 10 minutes for something called Banana Tax, imagine what you can pull off for something you’re passionate about? Here’s how we worked it.

  1. We all wrote some random words on pieces of paper.
  2. We formed into partners and drew two random words for each team.
  3. We then had 10 minutes to brainstorm the first pitch.
  4. One partner then pitched to everyone. You have 2 minutes.
  5. Once each team had pitched once, we all gave feedback on the pitches.
  6. We broke into teams again for 10 minutes to brainstorm the second partners pitch, incorporating the feedback.
  7. Your partner then pitches.
  8. More feedback, done.

This was our first time running this event and IMHO it was great. The feedback in the room was massively valuable and we just don’t get enough chance to actually practice pitching day to day.

I’d love to hear what others who attended thought. Please comment below if you were there.

ThreeFortyNine is hosting two Half Baked events in March