What: Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting on how to pitch your startup, by serial entrepreneur Samir Patel.
When: Saturday, May 1, 5:30pm
Where: e-Zest Office Terrace, 2nd Floor, Anand Nilay Business Center, Near Karve Statue, Karve Road, Kothrud. Map (thanks Hetal)
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.

Samir Patel is a New York based serial entrepreneur, who is visiting Pune and we have arranged a talk by him about how to pitch your startup, and why you need to fine-tune your pitch (the investor pitch, the high concept pitch, the elevator pitch). Some of you might remember Samir from a POCC presentation last November.

Samir is the Founder of Prudent.ly, a social marketplace designed for connecting customers with questions to their social network, reviewers and sellers in the context of a question. Earlier, he co-founded SearchForce that helps manage search marketing campaigns in a burgeoning $6 billion yearly market with its algorithmic trading platform. At iPIN, later acquired by Valista for $50+ million, he designed the world’s first open scalable mobile payments platform. Samir also crafted the go-to-market strategy for eBay’s apparel division, which is now a $500 million business unit and growing. He architected efficient systems for Stanford Graduate School of Business in the area of analytics, courseware management and security. Much quoted in CNN, BusinessWeek, Reuters and Mercury News, Samir has a B.S. in Computer Science and an MBA in Brand Marketing from Cornell University.

During his 2009 sabbatical, he walked solo for 1000 kilometers in the wild Himalayas and circumambulated the Narmada river just with two pairs of clothes and little money. He also serves as a volunteer at ManavSadhna and Gramshree at Gandhi Ashram and has started http://www.maareva.org for the long term sustenance of Mother Narmada.

Outline of the Talk

Investors donât invest in businesses. They invest in stories about businesses. If you want to raise money on favorable terms, you need multiple investment offers. How do you get multiple offers? Tell a good story to several investors at the same time. A good story can’t sell a pile of garbage, but it will keep a gem from going unnoticed. You can tell a story in a sentence; you can tell a story in a paragraph; and you can tell a story in a 20-minute pitch. Startups need to do all three.

Traction: What is traction

Introductions to Investors:

• Why do I need an introduction?
• How do I get an introduction?
• Who makes the best introductions?
• Who makes the worst introductions?
• What should I send middlemen?

High Concept Pitches:

• What’s a high-concept pitch?
• What makes a good high-concept pitch?
• Why should I write a high-concept pitch?
• Aren’t high-concept pitches too simple?
• From incoherent to high-concept

Elevator Pitch:

• What’s an elevator pitch?
• Why should I craft an elevator pitch?
• Dissecting the elevator pitch
• Elevator pitches with bullet

The Deck:

• What’s a deck?
• The best deck template in the universe
• Tell a story with the slides
• Format your deck

Non-Disclosures:

• Can I get investors to sign an NDA?
• Pros and cons to sending a deck
• Your deck can get in the hands of the competition
• When to send a deck

Outline adapted from Venture Hacks, ‘Pitching Hacks’ http://www.venturehacks.com/

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