Reflections on Pitch Like A Girl
It took a couple of days (thanks Zavva and MyiCellar...), but we’ve recovered from Pitch Like A Girl and are now ready to look back upon what we learned through this valuable and inspiring event. This inaugural pitch night bringing together the female entrepreneur community with fantastic investors during RISE Conference was a huge success due to some amazing teamwork and an incredible community of supporters. It comes with a few takeaways as well but overall, I am proud that the overall feel of collaboration and empowerment was achieved.
There was a lot of excitement in advance and we were hoping that we would find the right connection between the pitching teams and investors. Obviously critical to the success of the evening!
Meeting most of the entrepreneurs for the first time huddled together with excitement just 20 minutes before the first pitch, we shared a moment that really felt like a pre-game pep talk. Excited and nervous for the women surrounding me, I was proud of the environment we had created. As Samar Shaheryar, Founder of Baby Hero, pointed out to Forbes, "The energy in the room was so different from other startup events. Supportive and collaborative, not competitive".
Well, myself and all 150 attendees were blown away by the quality of the pitches we heard. We are still getting comments days later (feel free to keep ‘em coming!). Even though we did a brief coaching call before the event, the quality of the teams were a real testament to the professionalism and energy of the founders pitching. Not to mention, it was a difficult decision selecting just these 10 out of the incredible applications we received!
The judges then presented insightful questions to each team. Questions that each team will take away, think about and use to continue building their business.
While waiting for the judges to deliberate, we heard pitches from two teams of high school from TechnovationHK, a program to increase engagement amongst school girls in technology and entrepreneurship. Given that Next Chapter, along with many others in Hong Kong’s startup community, have been supporting them in their journey through training and mentoring, we were excited to have them pitch and launch their crowdfunding campaign. To promote entrepreneurship, funding and tech with young girls is a perfect fit - all very exciting! Plus the event offered more practice before the teams head off to San Francisco to join the World Summit Pitch event.
The wait for the judges to debate who they were interested in investing in was longer than expected, and from what we could tell through the glass doors, very robust!
When they emerged, they shared valuable insights and congratulated all teams on their excellent pitches and innovative startups. With all 10 teams lined up near the front, investors Lori Granito, Melissa Guzy, Felix Lam and Renu Bhatia announced the four teams they wanted to invest in! Sharesies, Baby Hero, Ozmo and GoSkills.
Discussions between investors and startups have begun and we look forward to sharing their journey with you. As for the other 6 teams, we know there were more potential investors in the audience and opportunities just around the corner. As Bei Zhou, Founder of Valoot, can attest to, just because one of the above investors didn’t select her business to work with doesn’t mean another won’t - she just raised $1M!
Finally, As Brooke Roberts from Sharesies said "the evening was the highlight of RISE for her" and we couldn't agree more!
A huge congratulations to the all the teams that competed and the investors for making it a great evening!
What’s next? Well, we’re working on this now and would love to keep you updated. Sign up to receive news from Next Chapter here.