This time, the Innovative Academy mentoring session was held at Swiss-Belhotel International (11/11). The topic raised in this session was Pitching and Fundraising to prepare the participants for the Innovative Academy Demo Day. The session was opened by Denny Wijayanto, as the Innovative Academy Program Head, by sharing his experience in pitching. Before entering the pitching material, the speaker or commonly called Denny explained the types of funders such as investors, donors, government, and individuals so that the participants knew who their target audience was because each funder had their own characteristics.
In this session, the target audience that will be focused on is investors. Investors want to know several things before investing their funds. First, they want to know what problem they want to solve and what solution they offer. In pitching, participants need to understand and be able to explain simply the solution offered by their product. Therefore, Denny gave tips to try to explain the product or service to grandmothers or grandfathers to find out if they understood the product being explained. Second, investors want to know if they have the right target for their product and if they know how to acquire it. Then, it is important for startups to validate the market that proves that the product offered can indeed solve the problem. Third, investors want to know who the competitors are and what differentiates the startup product from the competitor’s product so that they can win the market. Participants can use positioning quadrants to assess the position of the product in the market. The thing to note is that investors are more interested in mass markets than niche markets. Fourth, investors want to know how the company can generate revenue, what its business model is, and whether the income is sustainable. Fifth, investors want to know how far the startup’s progress is and what has been achieved. Sixth, investors want to know how much, for what, and how long the funds will be used to ensure that the funds requested make sense. Seventh, investors want to buy the future of the business so they want to know the business goals and how the strategy is, including marketing and customer acquisition. Denny emphasized not to forget to make projections in making this strategy. The last thing investors want to know is the team because investors want to know who will manage their funds. Tips from Denny, show a picture of yourself and include contact information that can be contacted during the pitching.
In addition, it is important to update social media because investors often check the social media of startup founders such as Instagram and LinkedIn. In this session, Denny inserted motivations in his presentation material to make the participants more enthusiastic because they are the chosen people who get an extraordinary opportunity to be here. The session was closed with a question and answer session from the enthusiastic participants, but had to end due to limited time. After the pitching and fundraising presentation, the session continued with a pitching practice session using English. After that, each group received an evaluation of their presentation. Overall, the evaluation delivered by Denny was the lack of data sources used, the flow in the pitch deck slide, the spelling of numbers in English, the consistency in the presentation. In addition, Denny also provided technical strategies such as team members who did not present could give their brochures to investors, how to do elevator pitches, and how to negotiate.