Creative3 Pitch 101 Webinar

Today, I logged into the Creative3 Pitch 101 Webinar, hosted by Philippe Ceulen of QUT Creative Enterprise Australia (CEA). This was my second go at attending this event. I originally signed up for the physical workshop that took place in QUT Kelvin Grove. But it was not to be and so I was grateful for the webinar 2nd chance!

While I attended a few Startup Weekends, I always seem to miss the pitch workshops. Mostly because I wasn't going to be the one doing the final pitch and usually there was something else that needed to be done while the workshop was on. I also missed to the pitch afternoons that were part of pre-events. As a result, this was my first time I got an extended presentation on pitching.

I am not going to recap everything Philippe covered, but I wanted to highlight three resources that Philippe highlighted. Namely, the Only 10 Slides You Need in Your Pitch which remains the gold standard for pitching but that Philippe extended by two slides. I did take a screenshot of Philippe's slide list but I can't find it. But I know the last slide was "contact" and we had a discussion about how it's important to make sure the contact slide contains up to date information.  Might seem like a small thing but the early life of startups is about transitions. So it's not unusual to find broken websites and emails that bounce. Unfortunately, every failure to connect is potentially a lost opportunity. So the "contact us" slide is very important.

Figure 1: Dramatic Structure

The other two resources Philippe shared were around the need to tell a story. I think we all know that most humans are not good with facts and figures but we do remember stories. Whenever pitching is mentioned, the "tell a story" aspect is always emphasised. But Philippe made the explicit connection to the dramatic structure, using Figure 1.

Being a fiction writer who is actively writing a fantasy novel, I am of course familiar with the dramatic structure. But I didn't think about trying to think of a pitch in that context. To that end, Philippe pointed us to "The mountain pass, the berries and the princess" by Alan Jones, who is an entrepreneur in residence at QUT's accelerators. I am looking forward to reading the article.

So yes, Pitching 101 as an afternoon well spent, in my opinion! To finish this post off, I'll just mention that the workshop was held to promote and get potential participants ready for Creative3 Pitch competition. I am keen to see how the event unfolds. It should be fun!

My Hardware Startup Weekend Experience

Last weekend I took part in the Hardware Startup Weekend at the Arc Incubator space. I was there Friday and Sunday. But missed Saturday due to illness. But my group was pretty easy going, and so I wasn't kicked out. Although I wasn't able to contribute to much beyond the slide deck on Sunday. It was an interesting experience, and I was impressed with how the limited space at the Incubator was utilised. But let's start at the beginning.

Compared to my first startup weekend last November at River City Labs and my second startup weekend, the creative tech startup, at QUT Kelvin Grove, the Hardware Startup Weekend attracted a much smaller crowd. But this was a good thing because the Arc incubator isn't as big as River City Labs. Also, while QUT had a lot of space, I can't say the choice of space during that weekend was particularly inspired. But the crowd that did gather was very enthusiastic, and as a result, we had six teams successfully completely journey. There was a seventh team but they stopped on Saturday and an eight-team never fully committed.

Now, I did pitch on Friday night. "Happy Place" concept was that we use an emotion tracking wearable to create a profile of what places make a person happy. This will take into account subtle things we don't think about like lighting, architecture, ambience and background noise etc. Then the companion app will help people find more places that fit the profile of their happy place. The idea got a few votes but not enough interest to form a group around it.

I wasn't expecting the concept to be super popular. It's just a bit too complex with an unclear consumer base to be attractive. What I wanted was some feedback and connections because I am working on a separate project around emotion tracking. I was pointed towards the founder of Body Corporate Wellness and ended-up joining team Gym Lift with him.

Our team was pretty easy going and that was a good thing. Because I couldn't make it on Saturday and Sunday, I could only help a little with the slide deck. The bulk of the prototype development was done by my teammate, Keith Lang who is the founder of Team Purr, who I originally met during the November Startup Weekend. 

The idea behind Gym Lift was to target the underserved free weight market and develop a gadget that let users auto count their reps. It would be a way to reduce their cognitive load. Also, perhaps motivate them through gamification. Furthermore, gyms could use the embedded sensors to track which free weight equipment was in demand. Also, in theory, users could check out equipment in advance and other similar application.

Ultimately, it was a good idea for the weekend but not a product that could get to market. However, the three winners could be viable businesses. The first prize was taken by Water Aware, which is a water sensing device and service for remote properties without good telecommunication coverage. Second prize went to Rider Remote, a companion device for motorbikes that allows safer information ingestion and interaction while riding. Third Prize when to Deep Sleep, a sleep device. I think that Rider Remote is the most viable idea and potential business to come out of the weekend. Deep Sleep is an idea that appeals to everyone, but there is like three dozen sleep devices in the market and all of them are work for some people but not all people. Water Aware's is a good project concept, in that there are farmers who need to monitor water levels in remote tanks. But the big challenge is the communication. If they solve the communication hurdle, their product without being the water sensor but the communication service. However, they didn't solve the communication challenge over the weekend.

Overall, I am glad I attended. I wish I could be of more use to my team. But I wasn't planning on having chest pains early Saturday morning that ruled me out of the day. That said, I don't think I will attend any further Startup Weekend, for the whole weekend anyway, for the rest of the year. I do enjoy pitch night, so I might continue to attend those. But yes, overall, a good time was had by all!

Team Gym Lift

Hardware Startup Weekend Brisbane

I haven't been shy about not enjoying my time at the Creative Startup Weekend in March. So I had no plans to attend any more startup weekend. Maybe attend the pitch night because I love hearing ideas, half-baked and repetitive though a lot of them may be. However, after seeing the Arc Incubator Space, I couldn't pass up the chance to see how the incubator space would be used for a startup weekend. Also, a friend of mine is going to be mentoring. So I decided to take another roll of the dice and see how it goes. Looking forward to joining a group and just having a good time!

Tanda Hackathon 2018

Last Friday I attended the opening night of the Tanda Hackathon 2018 with the theme of employee experience. I did want to take part when I signed up for the event. But, unfortunately, since then I had other commitments come up that meant that I didn't want to devote my entire Saturday to this event. Also, the friend I wanted to do the event with is now busy with an application for the RCL accelerator, that too played a part in deciding not to participate in the full hackathon. So I decided just to go along, listen to the pitches, see what ideas people had for products to improve employee experience and enjoy the evening. I also ended up pitching two ideas because why not!

The ideas on the pitch night were interesting. There were two ideas that caught my attention. 1) an app for tracking and rewarding good behaviour when not at work. I don't think this was going to be practical because of privacy concerns. But when one bad tweet can get you fired, there is merit in considering rewarding employees for being good netizens. Also, there is merit in the idea of rewarding employees for taking care of their body and mind.

2) An offboarding app and process that follows up with employees who were fired. Again, not sure about the practicality of this because I imagine a lot of fired employees would be angry and not keen to hear from the employer. But then again, I think a lot of employees would appreciate the attention. Especially if its meaningful in that the offboarding involves pointing the former employee towards programs and services that could help them land their next job. 

The two ideas I put forward were 1) Core Skills - which was about benchmarking your skills today and tracking how they develop over time. Crucially, the app would also keep track of market trends, giving employees active feedback about how the most valuable product they will ever work on, themselves, is coming along.

My other idea, which I came up with then and there, was 2) Emotion Tracker. The emotion tracker idea came about because at least three of the pitches was about rating other employees, managers etc. Unfortunately, studies show that our current form of active reviews, rating and feedback don't work. But given that emotion tracking wearables are already a thing, why not use them to track how employees feel during a shift. Properly analysed, the trackers could expose bad managers who demoralise employees, or co-workers who sap the energy out of the room. Conversely, it could also help identify good managers and co-workers.

Obviously, since I wasn't planning on sticking around, I didn't try to form a group around my ideas. I probably should have informally polled the audience to see what they thought. But I didn't think of that on the night. So the night ended with pizza and a pleasant walk back to King George Square bus station. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night, I think!

Group Mentoring Session

Last Thursday, I attended a group mentoring hosted by Peter Laurie. I turned up with no set expectation but because the event crossed my social media and since I had met Peter through a different meet-up last week, I was curious to see what he had to say. It turned out to be one of the best sessions on start-ups and business in-general that I have ever attended!

Peter has an engaging way of delivery that made the topics easy to absorb. By their very nature, the topics were already interesting for an entrepreneur, but we all know that a bad delivery can spoil even the most interesting topics. So the fact that Peter is a great speaker was one of the big highlights of the evening. So what did I learn?

The first thing Peter covered had an unexpected overlap with my PhD in that it was all about perspective based on expertise. Namely, Peter talked about how new entrants into the start-up space may mistake false confidence for true expertise. Of course, the only cure for this issue is to critically analyse every piece of information we receive until we are ourselves expert enough in the space to know by instinct what is worth listening to and what is not.

The next topic Peter covered was 2 x 2 matrix regarding feedback developed by Kim Scott in her book Radical Candour. It was about the four types of feedback you can get about your work and ideas. The best is radical candour, which is delivered to you by people who care but challenges you directly. But the directness is not to tear you down but to help you refine and justify what you are doing. It also acts as a reality check.

By contrast, the worst is ruinous empathy, which might be great for your ego and anxiety but not great for your life and career. As it is empathy without any feedback and thus worse than manipulative insincerity because we can usually recognise when someone is neither caring nor sharing what they think about your ideas and work. As for obnoxious aggression, this is giving feedback, but without caring about the impact, it might have on the person receiving the criticism. Remembering that criticism is technically a neutral word when meant as the analysis and judgement of the merits and faults of a work. But when you are an adult, harsh criticism is still better than no criticism, which is certainly a good life lesson to learn.

The next topic covered was about focusing on core competency and thus being free to have multiple businesses. This was good to hear because there is prevailing wisdom in the startup community to not spread yourself too thin. But from my understanding, what Peter was suggesting was that if you know what your core competencies are, you can apply your competencies in multiples avenues without stretching yourself too thin. It also means you are not putting all your eggs in the same startup basket. But most importantly, no matter what happens with your startup fails, you are still walking away with an improved skill set.

The next section was about resources and the difference between resources that are spent over time: Physical, Financial and Technology, with technology being a depreciating resource due to the progress of technology. I.e. unless you spend time and money keeping your technological edge or your technology skills updated, they will fall behind. By contrast Reputation, Organisational advantages and Informational resources get stronger as they are used. This is probably the section I understood the least. So I'll have to do a bit more research on the PROFIT mnemonic.

The next section was about risk and reward and basically explaining why venture capitalists and angel investors behave the way they do. I.e. Explaining why do they even bother investing in the first place.

The discussion on funding was followed by a complex section on meaningful stats. I.e. stats that a VC can use to measure the chances of success of a startup, as opposed to vanity stats. Peter touched on the "AARRR! Metric" for startups in this section and followed it on by talking about the Kano Model for features. He added an extra feature type, called the "delighter feature", to the Kano Model. The "delighter" being a feature no one asked for because they couldn't imagine it but once added, they loved! The discussion on features naturally led to a discussion on pricing and a concept Peter termed "Foundation Partner", which is a way to using a small subset of early adopters to price your product or service accurately. I put all the slides for this part of the discussions together on the image carousel.

Missing from the photos is the diagram on feature creep or rather, how to introduce new features to your service without throwing the pricing tiers out of whack. The key take away was that you shouldn't just blindly add a new feature to all pricing tiers. Something that should be obvious but only once it is pointed out to you.

Overall, as I said at the start, the session was one of the best that I have ever attended. 10/10, I would recommend it to all budding entrepreneurs and even existing business people.