Ask HN: Would a product or pitch workshop be useful? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would a product or pitch workshop be useful?

23 pointsjoshu15 comments

I've been thinking about doing a weekly product/demo/pitch workshop down in or around Palo Alto.

I'd probably limit it to 5ish pre-VC companies, and try to make sure they're mutually non-competitive so that everyone could hear everything. Perhaps a few post-VC entrepreneurs could also chip in advice.

Caveats: I've done exactly one company and had exactly one exit.

Do you think this would be useful/fun/interesting?

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I think a lot of it wouldn't depend on your level of coaching as much as your level of honesty. Most of the time when you start pitching you just need people to tell you how much of a 'tard you sound like and why nothing you're saying makes sense or is relevant.

One thing I could see being problematic is getting too nerdy of a slant on such a gathering since it's pretty easy to slip into pitching tech rather than pitching a business. I can remember seeing business folks' eyes rolling into the backs of their heads when I started by asking, "Do you know what a graph is?"

> your level of honesty

I assure you, this won't be a problem.

It would be interesting to watch these pitches online afterwards. Record it and post them!

Also the quality of the pitches will be dependent on who you can attract, which will be dependent on how many people hear about this. So you should market it a little and make sure to title posts like this something like "Founder of Del.icio.us Starts Pitching Workshop" instead of being understated about your one company. ;-)

Yeah, although I can imagine some poeple would want some level of confidentiality.

I actually largely abhor pitches, so maybe it would just be product/demo workshops? I don't know.

It remains to be seen how much of what I did was skill vs luck...

Although I'm not in the Valley, I think something like this would be helpful. It seems to me that pitch quality is related to how much exposure you've had to investors & customers. I think you can add value there, regardless of how much of del.icio.us was skill vs luck :-)

They might even get offers from a wider range of people than attend if it was broadcast. That's the point of TC50 right? To give people a chance to pitch in public.

I'm not sure I care for or would want a large audience.

You don't learn to pitch at TC50. You learn to pitch by having done it 500 times before you're on that stage. What's being talked about here are some of the first dozen of that 500. Recording your pitches for yourself is a good idea. Trying to draw public attention to them is not.

Why not just have the gear for recording available and let the pitchers decide when they're there if they're ready to do a public pitch/presentation?

If you're going to have people come back for a second or third time with updated presentations you could use it as a sort of graduation ceremony to have the thing published.

Why don't you do a music + pitch combination. Get an unknown band to play, get a series of people to present their idea. It would be more interesting than just a bunch of unversed, poor presenters reading powerpoint slides. If people get used to the idea of a pitch being infotainment, they will start to do them correctly. A pitch is an advertisment, and and advertisement should not be a guy just reading some text.

The mixed audience will also give the presenters feedback from non-technical people.

lol wut?

I actually like the idea of adding music or something else that's weird and quirky to the workshop. A bunch of guys pitching their startups sounds like every other tech event that already exists in the Bay Area.

Really? This concept is that strange to you?

I was just investigating this exact thing in the last few weeks. I'm pretty much ready to start pitching, but i could definitely use a forum to try it on first.

Please set this up!

I'm also wondering if this should be a review instead of a workshop.

I'll start looking for some space, I suppose.

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