Posts Tagged ‘Pitches’
TechCrunch Pitches and the Culture of Startup Mediocrity
You’ll find the seed for TechCrunch Pitches burried in the comment section of this 1938Media video post. Yes, go and take a look, I assure you it is there. Little surprise that TechCrunch boss, Michael Arrington finds his gold chez Loren Feldman these days, but then again the idea of pitching your startup to VC big-wigs is hardly something new. Sony Corporation owns the rights to the ‘Dragon’s Den’ format, a TV show that originated in Japan in which entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to gain investment finance from business experts. The BBC was quick to adopt the format and Dragon’s Den has proved to be a huge TV sensation in the UK.
In the 1938Media video we see Feldman grilling a bewildered German web entrepreneur who turns out to be Martin Obert of Gloofi.com. In this ‘kitchen sink’ drama, Obert is supposed to have gate crashed Arrington’s house with the aim of pitching his website for some VC money. [Note: someone ought to write a book on how to create a start-up without VC money... or perhaps Twigged will do a post and get Kosso and a few others onboard?] The main interest of the video isn’t about Obert, Feldman or Arrington, rather it’s about the extent to which people are willing to go to stick their spoons in the great honey pot. And as with all Web phenonmena, it’s contagious: if one guy’s willing to do, you can bet your bottom dollar that there’s 1000 others who are willing to do it too.
So a couple of days pass after the video post, and then surprise surprise, TechCrunch launches a new feature: Elevator Pitches - a place “where founders and CEOs get a chance to pitch their startups to you, the Techrunch audience.” Now the whole entreprise could be a huge success were it not for one tiny problem: the ‘you’ word. Not only is there no open prospect of actually securing VC money from participating in the pitches, but to make matters worse your startup is scrutinized by the general public. So with no prospect of money or expertis, why do people participate in the pitches? Feedback? Free traffic? Give me a break. I’d be willing to bet that 99% of participants submit pitches with the hope that somone out there will send them an email with a 5 or 6 figure sum.
It’s the donkey and carrot scenario. Not only does TechCrunch Pitches highlight the growing culture of mediocrity in the Web startup world, but it is a prime contributor. Countless, redundant startup ideas are being churned out on a daily basis across the globe, driven at their core by the hope of investment funding. Many of the ideas put forward for seed money lack basic groundwork (market research, budget planning, implementation costs etc) and many of the entrepreneurs shield their real aspirations until they’re able to secrure funding. What TechCrunch Pitches brings to the table is the popularization of the VC funding process. It tells us that anyone with ideas and a video camera can be the next Bill Gates, what it omits to say though is that the road to success is about work, more work, and even more work.