My First Pitch

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“Ummmmm, hi, I’m Ben Lang, I’m working on MySchoolHelp, which is a platform where students can find and share notes from their high school.” That was the opening line of my first pitch in front of investors, entrepreneurs and college students. As challenging as the process may have been, I can certainly say that it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life.

Finding the event

While searching for tech events in the NYC area, I stumbled on an interesting event called the 34th Entrepreneur Roundtable. To tell you the truth, my partner and I weren’t actively looking for investors, but I thought this would be a good experience. It was free, close by and the timing was perfect. I filled out the application form and decided to give it a shot.

A week later, the event’s organizer, Murat, emailed me saying I had been accepted to speak.

Public speaking isn’t my forte. This was going to be my first speech since my Bar Mitzvah at age 13! I know how important speaking is as a skill, in particular for entrepreneurs. My reaction: game on. I knew that it would be hard work and nerve-racking for me especially considering that over 200 people would be in the audience. In any case, I had to do it to prove that I could.

Researching the audience

I found out that the audience would consist of entrepreneurs, investors and college students. I had to make sure it would be intriguing for the investors, engaging for the entrepreneurs and interesting for the college students.

Preparing the pitch

5 minutes: that was the maximum time for the pitch. Mine was supposed to be around 5 minutes but it turned out to be three minutes and ten seconds.
Writing the entire pitch took a lot of time and effort. I wanted it to be perfect. We decided to follow this format:

• What is your business in one sentence?
• Who are you and your team?
• Why would people use your service?
• What is the product? How does one use it? What is the business model? How do you make money?
• Prototype? Launched? How many users? Revenue?
• What are you looking for and what will you do with it? How will you get more users and grow the company?

Practicing

Originally, I thought that we would split the speech. We practiced over and over hoping we would be taken seriously due to our age and experience. We were the only high schoolers present. Luckily, we arrived an hour and a half early and had plenty of time to practice.
As soon as the organizer entered the room we asked him the one question we needed answered: could we alternate presenting the pitch? To our dismay, he said no. We tossed a coin and I ended up pitching, although he joined me for the Q&A session afterwards.

Delivery

To say that I was nervous beforehand would be an understatement. Fortunately, right after I started I calmed down and felt inspired. I may have said “umm” a few too many times but I truly believe in our idea and I think it transpired in my words. My biggest challenge was to speak as clearly and slowly and for the first time in my life I think I succeeded.

Networking

After the event, many people approached us to chat. Some knew of investors that would be interested, a few had questions and many just wanted to connect.

Aftermath

A week later, I asked the videographer to send me the clip. I posted it on YouTube and in a week it received over 150 views. Not as many as my eBay interview but a satisfactory amount. Now, whenever I’m sharing the concept of MySchoolHelp, I attatch the video as well.

Here it is in case your curious

Have you ever pitched before? Any tips or feedback?