The Seedstars Accra experience
Being shortlisted to pitch at a Seedstars event is an honor any startup will kill for but with honor comes responsibility. This year’s event in Accra had 8 startups shortlisted to pitch and no one came to joke. All eyes were on the prize. We had an initial Bootcamp at the Impact Hub where we went through some Seedstars presentations about the community and then dived in to demo pitches where we received feedback from mentors. This is where my headache started. It is after having a trial pitch that you realize it’s happening — winter is coming.
Preparing for pitch day
Five minutes! That’s all the time each startup had to get their thoughts across. You’d think that was a lot of time but there’s so much to cram into 5 minutes. Anxiety and fumbling could easily take 2 out of the 5 minutes. Nothing could be left to chance. I had to prepare very adequately. I reworked our standard AgroCenta pitch deck and sliced it down from 19 to 14 slides with each slide mostly having a picture and a one-liner to help me explain the point. I ensured the slides focused mainly on
- The problem we’re solving
- Our solution
- Our Competitive advantage
- Size of the market we’re in
- Traction gained and
- Our Team
Now that I had the slides ready I needed to practice the flow of my story keeping in mind the time allocation of 5 minutes.
I set my timer to 5 minutes and practiced the story over and over and over and over till I virtually had the story cemented. I’m sure my neighbors were wondering why I kept talking to myself for so long.
I practiced while bathing. I replayed the story in head while eating. Practiced while commuting from home to town and vice versa. Practiced on the toilet and while laying in bed. I had sleepless nights anyway so why not. After several attempts I got a constant pitching time of 4 minutes 30 seconds. Not bad. I was ready to do this — or so I thought.
Pass me the mic let me get this pressure off
When the pitching order was shared two nights before pitch day, AgroCenta was first to take the stage. My heart beat faster when I thought about all the possible things that could go wrong with being the first to pitch. The expectations will be high, there are no sample mistakes already made for you to avoid, the judges will bash you first with their fresh energy.
Wednesday, September 13th, 4.45pm-ish I had no choice than to grab the mic and tell the story as I had practiced it, after the MC for the event called AgroCenta to come pitch. I finished before five minutes and the story wasn’t as smooth as I had practiced. I was just so happy the pressure was off and I could have normal heartbeats.
Why are all the judges so serious?
The most dreadful part of a pitch competition is taking questions from the judges. You never know what they’re thinking and what question they’re going to hurl at you. The last thing you want is a question you can’t answer. The judges were not smiling at all after my pitch. They were looking at me like I had just announced an increase in fuel prices.
The questions were asked regarding
- How much of the revenue we generated was actually profit
- How many of our 8000+ farmers were actually active users of the platform
- How we make money
- I can’t remember the last one.
I managed to answer all questions to the best of my ability but the judges were still not smiling.
8 pitches and the final verdict
All of the 8 startups pitched. At this point I was less stressed but had a headache. I hadn’t eaten properly because I didn’t want any pre-pitch stomach upset. After a 30 minute break we came back for the announcement of the winners.
Third place
Second place
…and the winner of Seedstars Accra 2017 isssss AgroCenta!!! At this point my headache just disappeared till all the handshakes and picture taking was done. We’re super thrilled and can’t wait for the regional and global summits in December and April 2018 respectively.
It was great meeting sharp folks at the event and also meeting other startups doing wonderful work in Ghana. The future is bright.
