This week at Flashstarts was an exciting and nerve-wracking one, for many reasons.
Earlier in the week, interns received notice of their mid-summer bonus, which is awarded proportionally to each intern’s contributions. Later in the week, the first round of shark tanks began.
Shark Tank
If you’re not familiar with the show of the same title, our shark tanks are when local investors come to our office to listen to our entrepreneurs’ pitches. When the pitch is over, they ask a multitude of challenging questions and offer both feedback and advice. This opportunity allows the teams to practice delivering pitches to an unfamiliar—and frankly, slightly scary—audience, which will help prepare them for Demo Day.
We are very grateful to the “sharks” who took time out of their busy day to listen to the pitches of our entrepreneurs this week. Thank you to Phil Bessler, Ron Copfer, John Blair, Charlie MacMillan, Mark Woodka, John Knific, and Morris Wheeler for coming all the way up to the 21st floor and sharing your wisdom with our teams.
The shark tanks, while intimidating, taught the teams a bunch of important lessons. Here are a few of them:
“Be open to pivoting when needed, and always keep the customer in mind”
-Kritika Kripakaran, Knot Profit
“Make sure your explanation of the solution your company offers is comprehensive. It has to match up, from what your solution is to how you execute and deliver that solution– whether it is in the form of a product or service– and WHY you’re the one to execute it”
-Matthew Moss, Vestor
“Only in retrospect will I truly be able to identify the most important lesson I learned form the Shark Tanks. However, I did learn some things which seem useful now. Namely, I learned which of my assumptions to validate in order to make remesh a tempting investment, what to look for in a possible investor, and which parts of my pitch seemed to resonate best.”
-Andrew Konya, remesh
“It was helpful to see how my pitch comes across to an outside investor who isn’t as familiar with my business as the people within Flashstarts. Also, I received some great feedback on things to add/keep/remove from my investor pitch.”
-Rob Holland, Travel Later
Almost There…
Now that we’re halfway through our startup accelerator program, it’s increasingly important for the teams to interact with outside investors. (Although we will be holding another shark week towards the end of the program.) After all, as of today, we are exactly one month away from Demo Day.
