This January 30 to February 1 saw the third Startup Weekend Cologne in equally many years. And what a startup weekend it was! Completely sold out in advance with over 125 participants and a total of over 200 people visiting the same perfect venue as last year, STARTPLATZ.
MC’ing @ Dublin Web Summit 2015
I recently had the honor and privilege to be invited to moderate (MC) the startup competition at The Web Summit in Dublin. I had a blast.
“Web Summit is a technology-industry conference held in Dublin, Ireland since 2010. The topic of the conference is centered on internet technology and attendees range from Fortune 500 companies to the world’s most exciting tech companies. This contains a a mix of CEOs and founders of tech start ups together with a range of people from across the global technology industry, as well as related industries.” – from Wikipedia
Forbes describes the events as “the best technology conferences on the planet” and CNN call them “the hottest events in tech”. For me and others, it’s one of the best opportunities this side of the Atlantic to catch up with old friends in the startup scene from around the world and make new ones.
Do you want to book me too? Shoot me an email at [email protected] and let’s talk.
As I’ve been around the world pitching my own startup at some of the world’s most prestigious pitching events, one of the ways I’m paying it forward to our local startup ecosystem is by teaching our startups how to pitch at the Rhineland Pitch in Cologne, Germany – a tier one startup pitching event that aims to educate our regional startups and raise our pitching quality to better compete worldwide.
If you want to practice your own pitch, I’ve shared the slide deck I use at the free pitch coaching session each month below. And don’t forget to apply for the next Rhineland Pitch – See you there!
As you probably know, I’m passionate about pitching – because we SUCK at pitching here in Europe! So when the new Cologne-based incubator STARTPLATZ asked me if I would be interested in getting involved in a new program to help our regional startup entrepreneurs becoming better at pitching, I wasn’t hard to convince.
So say hello to the Rhineland-Pitch!
The Rhineland-Pitch is a pitch competition event held at STARTPLATZ every last Monday of each month that aims to heighten the quality of our regional startup pitches by providing intensive training to the applicant entrepreneurs and letting the winners pitch to a select and exclusive audience of entrepreneurs, press and investors.
A week in advance, all applicants get a one hour intensive crash course on pitching and after a rapid-fire elevator pitching session, the winners get an additional and immediate four hours of individual pitch training from yours truly.
At the end of the individual training sessions there’s immediately another selection process where the entrepreneurs present the pitch they’ve prepared and the best get invited to the Rheinland-Pitch event the following Monday.
So what do you win except for the glory? Well, a chance to pitch in front of and meet with investors, get critical feedback – AND a video of your final pitch to boot! (So you better make your performance count!)
And it’s all for free! So apply now for the next Rheinland-Pitch May 27th!
Last Monday April 29th saw the first ever Rheinland-Pitch and here are some impressions from it:
Some stats from the first round:
And the winners are:
See Thomas @boydroid Riedel of NERDHUB’s gallery for more photos of the event.
And check out this bonus video to learn more about the competition, coaching and selection process:
If you didn’t make it the first time, practice and try again! See you there!
Pitchcademy is a new service that teaches you how to pitch like a pro. Record a video of your pitch directly in your browser, get reviewed and scored by a network of professional coaches within 24 hrs. Rinse, lather & repeat!
UPDATE – Pitchcademy morphed into the Pitching Masterclass over the years:
If you’re a startup entrepreneur, chances are you’ve already been to a lot of pitching events and you may even have pitched investors yourself already. You may have noticed that most pitches at these events – especially if you’re in Europe – suck!
Now take a minute and think about your own pitch: Are you completely confident that your pitch doesn’t suck? It’s always the others that suck – riiiiiiiiight?
Well, Francis Dierick and I certainly have made our fair share of bad pitches. We’ve been around. But along the way we picked up a couple of tricks on how to improve our pitches and learned a lot. At least enough to win several competitions and get invited to events as pitch coaches.
So we thought that we should share the secrets we picked up. We think everybody should have the chance to nail that perfect pitch. That’s why we decided to introduce Pitchcademy.
Pitchcademy teaches you how to pitch like a pro. Record a video of your pitch directly in your browser, get reviewed and scored by a network of professional coaches within 24 hrs. Rinse, lather & repeat! Try it now for free!