Peak Pitch - Startups "elevator pitch" on the ski slopes

  Peak Pitch is a fun way for start-ups to deliver their "elevator pitch" to VCs and investors on the chair lift ride to the peak of the ski slope.

Peak Pitch brings entrepreneurs and investors together for a unique version of the classic "elevator pitch." In the traditional elevator pitch, entrepreneurs take advantage of an unexpected opportunity to share an elevator ride with a potential investor and present their business idea, market size, and capital needs...all in about 3 minutes.

Peak Pitch was started in 2005 by Jesse Devitte , Phil Ferneau, and the team at Borealis Ventures, a New Hampshire based VC firm. The Peak Pitch program has grown this year to cover five dates at new england ski areas with more than 200 entrepreneurs and investors.

Yesterday at Mt. Sunapee ski resort lots of top name VCs came out to hear the pitches. Pictured here (from left to right) Jeffrey Beir - North Bridge Venture Partners, Don Dodge - Microsoft, Jeff Bussgang - IDG Ventures, Jesse Devitte - Borealis Ventures. Elliot Katzman of Commonwealth Ventures was there as well as representatives from eCoast Angels and other angel investment groups.

 

The skiing was great and the pitches were pretty good too. That is me on the far left, an unidentified entrepreneur in the middle, and angel investor Arlon Chaffee of eCoast Angels on the right. Note the ski bibs. Investors wore green colored bibs and entrepreneurs wore blue colored bibs. Jesse Devitte played match maker at the entrance to the chair lift matching entrepreneurs with investors with the same interests.

Hey, Brad Feld, how about doing this for entrepreneurs and investors in the Colorado area? Set a date and I will be there!

After a morning of pitching and skiing we met for lunch in the ski lodge. The top three ranked entrepreneurs were invited to pitch the whole crowd. The audience voted for their favorite pitch and prizes were awarded. Jeff Bussgang and Jeffrey Beir provided professional feedback to the entrepreneurs. The feedback was excellent advice for all entrepreneurs.

1. Start your pitch with who you are and your experience prior to starting this venture. VCs invest in talented people first and foremost. The idea is second. An experienced and talented person can make a success of a mediocre idea...but not the other way around.
2. What problem or pain point you are solving, and why the existing solutions fall short.
3. What stage is your company in; developing product, beta product, already have customers, how many people, etc.
4. How much money do you need, and what milestones will be reached.

Subscribe - To get an automatic feed of all future posts subscribe here, or to receive them via email go here and enter your email address in the box in the right column.

Comments

[brian]

Don,

I think point one is where VCs and other investors miss the boat when it comes to backing first-time entrepreneurs. Except for industries which require a lot of product and domain knowledge like healthcare, chips and telecom, most of the premier software and internet successes were led by founders who weren't reknowned experts in their field when they started. Brave VCs backed these "kids" because they could see past their inexperience and unknown management skills to the quality of their idea and the breakthrough they offered. Moreover, just because you have a great team doesn't mean you'll be any more of a success if you deliver a lousy product. Webvan was backed by the top investors and lead by the founder of Borders and look where that led to - a $1+ billion failure.

[Chris Westfall]

Great snow, great opportunities... http://www.vcintherockies.com/

[Brad Feld]

Don - I passed this around my gang - they reminded me that we already do this in Colorado - it's called "Venture Capital in the Rockies" - http://www.vcintherockies.com/. Your colleague Dave Drach came this year. Maybe you'll come also next year!

[Ted Rheingold]

I grew up skiing at Mt. Sunapee! Wish I could have been there for the biz/fun.

[Alfred Thompson]

Any snowboarders in the crowd? You want some of those young minded radical thinking snowboarders. (Full disclosure: I took up snowboarding a few years ago. :-)

Seems like this sort of event would work out better than a golf outing. More people get to talk to more people and no one is stuck with someone for hours at a time.

[Steve Lacey]

Rather than trying to bump into each other on the mountain, why not take the time to offer direct advice in the no harm/no foul model ala Rick Segal and Brad Feld.

It strikes me that all these "gather all the entrepreneurs together" events are more advantageous to the VCs than the entrepreneurs, to whom it's another "must attend" event without any guarantee of face time.

[Abraham Sultan]

Don are you planning to be at SaaSCon in April? (Sorry for the crappy comment)

[Mike Styles]

Discover more great stories like you have just read on our blog designed for worldly ski enthusiasts at www.skirebel.com