How Startups Get Suckered: The Pitch Contest
When entrepreneurs become a sideshow
In 20+ years of founding and selling companies, advising entrepreneurs and executives, and even back when I used to invest in startups, I’ve seen way too many entrepreneurs — both young and old, both fresh and experienced — fall for some of the same sketchy shit over and over again.
These people aren’t stupid. In fact, most of them are quite brilliant.
The reason why they get lured into these traps is because, for the most part, the traps are built on the foundations of actual opportunities. They look a lot like the real thing, with a twist.
The twist is where they get you.
Let’s talk about the twist that makes public investor pitch contests a thing, and some of the signs that maybe your startup isn’t going to win its next funding round.
An investor pitch is not a carnival sideshow
The concept of the public investor pitch contest started to gain steam about 10 years ago, for a number of reasons:
- Legitimate venture capital and investor conferences, following the lead of the tech startups they were investing in, realized they needed to become less stuffy and more attractive to a younger audience.
