What types of investors do you think this will suit the most?
Lots of investors don't like cold pitches, many prefer warm intros and with a bit of hustle I believe that most people are not out of reach.
What is the main problem being solved with this? Is it exposure to investors?
What are some of the success stories that have pitched and been funded through this?
And how does it differentiate to something like FounderFox?
(just a few questions haha)
@bentossell Thank you for the questions and concerns Ben. It is best suited for investors in the seed/angel space from around the world.
I have been very actively involved in the Indian Startup ecosystem by virtue of being the National Lead for "Headstart Network Foundation". Over the last 3.5 years after having interacted with 1000+ entrepreneurs directly, given everything which is there in the market right now, the average time to fix meetings with 50 investors is 1.5 months. And, in these 1.5 months entrepreneurs are just fixing meetings and not even pitching.
So that is one aspect. Other is, even before writing a single line of code for ShotPitch, we did a research on the life of investors and came out with four observations. We have integrated all of those observations into it and the product is a completely non-interfering one for Investors. Nothing ever goes to their email and there is no communication that happens until and unless an investor shortlists and wants to have a conversation.
The main and the biggest problem being solved is discovery of investors and pitching to them directly. Lets take an example "If you are an entrepreneur and doing a travel startup, the moment you want to raise money in this technology driven world, you should be empowered enough to have 100 investors in the travel space and sector agnostic right in front of you whom you can pitch directly without having to loose your mind/time in trying to get through to them.
Secondly, we have positioned ourselves as a layer on top of the platforms. We define ShotPitch like this: ShotPitch is a one touch connect, discovery and pitching mobile platform for startups to people interested in startups around the world"
When we say people interested in startups we do mean the conventional investors as well as the top management of top 100 technology companies. So if there is data company based in Bangalore and if we can enable them to pitch to senior engineering manager at Twitter, then apart from them becoming investors they can also become their best contextual mentor/advisor :)
Numbers: In the last three months of being in the private alpha mode with 15 startups(out of 1000+) and 40 investors( from Valley and India), we have enabled 300+ interactions with 3 closures.
We have been loved more by the investors, than by startups :)
@bentossell Phew I wrote an article almost for you questions :D
Remember our Twitter chat?
How are we different: Well you can compare with us any product/platform and when it comes to empowering entrepreneurs and allowing them to pitch directly, there isn't any.
The first meeting we had while in Valley was with Angel List and they loved our value proposition of on boarding people from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Pinterest and others. And yes, we already have a couple of people from these companies on board :)
Including the Founding engineer at Pinterest :)
@nitprashant haha love a detailed answer!
I'd be keen to see a few angel/seed investors jump in on their thoughts around this :)
The only thing that stood out to me in your answer was putting startups in front of the right types of investors straight away (like travel).
I think that is a good thing but also can be viewed from the otherside... it shows some hustle from the founders if they research firms/investors, know they like the travel space and then hustle some more to get a good, warm intro to them. I think (speculation based on reading/listening) that investors like this approach because it allows the founders to show certain qualities they want to invest in
@bentossell I completely agree with the point you are making Ben. When we on board investors and tell them the reasoning/understanding/throught process behind the product, they like it because we have built it keeping in mind their life. In fact, one of the things we always knew while conceptualizing was the fact that if this product has to work, it has to work for the demand side first i.e "Investors" and "Technologists" and all of that got validated when we did the invite only Alpha.
The theory of entrepreneurs hustling and getting to investors is something we find mind boggling. Is it fair that you and I waste a couple of months arranging for meetings in this age? :)
@nitprashant When you say "value proposition of on-boarding ppl from ____" , are these people supposed to be the word-of-mouth publicity to their founder friends or Angellist kind of syndicate fund participants in your eyes ?
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