What I Learned from Startupalooza — Andrew’s Take
Twenty-six dollars and sixty-two cents. A small fee, but it purchased 2 minutes of stage time and a handful of questions from a group of local (Washington DC area) investors. When Alex and I set out to start Better Product Company (formerly Codeless), we knew that this isn’t the type of business that investors would be interested in, yet we entered a pitch competition anyway. Why?
Marketing. For less than 3o bucks, we had a room full of founders, startups, and investors focused 100% on us and what we had to offer them. Our pitch was crisp, to the point, and quite effective. It was also incredibly, mega pink. The rest of this post is going to outline a few of the major takeaways from Startupalooza.
Our Business Adds Value
The vision of BPCO is to help founders, teams, and businesses build real software quickly, inexpensively, and without writing code. When we talk about de-risking software, people take notice. When we talk about faster delivery time, people take notice. The lack of code isn’t seen as a selling factor initially, but when we start talking about maintainability, people take notice. After the event, a healthy number of the pitchers that need software sought us out for a conversation, which was exactly why we were there!
We’re Not Incompetent
Our pitch was clear, concise, and effective. In two minutes, we were able to deliver our message. In many cases, the investors actually had to ask the founder what it was their business actually did, AFTER their pitch had concluded. Some of these businesses were live and running with real users, but they had terrible showings. Despite starting a week ago, Alex and I were able to put together what I consider an extremely sharp initial showing.
The event was confidence-inspiring. To see these other people running businesses and raising capital makes me feel like we have a shot at building something special.
BPCO is a People Company
We’ve got a pretty solid website and some cool technology powering our team. We’ve also a pretty sweet, bright pink color palette. We spent the better part of the past 2 weeks honing in on our value proposition and building our web app, but there was one simple thing we should have done that would’ve added more value: business cards!
It’s so simple, but I didn’t acknowledge this earlier. We are not a technology company, we’re a people company. The clients we will (hopefully) get are founders, managers, investors, and small business owners are all people with hopes, dreams, concerns, and fears. What BPCO offers is a way to fulfill dreams, assuage concerns, and subside the fear of failure.
Back to the business cards: we didn’t have any. People came up to us wanting to chat, ask us questions, set up meetings, but we had nothing to leave them with. Alex and I are both pretty personable and approachable, not to mention quite dapper, so not having a takeaway feels like a missed opportunity. Hopefully the bright pink presentation and the value we could provide will be enough for them to consider reaching out to us.
Having a Co-Founder Rocks
Alex kept me honest throughout the entire preparation. Our pitch deck was better because we paired on it. Our script was better because we paired on it. I have extreme confidence that both of us are capable of selling the same vision of BPCO, which is actually really impressive considering it’s only been a week or two in the making. The next time we do something like this, I’d have zero issue sitting in the crowd and letting Alex do the dog and pony show, and that’s a really great feeling to have as someone trying to build a business.
I’m Genuinely Excited About the Future
The biggest takeaway for me is how excited I was to talk about BPCO. This is something I really, truly believe in, and talking about it in public felt like a real shot of life. I’ve always believed that a career doesn’t have to feel like work, it doesn’t have to be a chore, and it can be something that makes you excited to get up in the morning. BPCO does that for me. My wife, Rachel, asked me how I felt after the pitch. The only word I could think of, and excuse the cliche, was, “Alive.”
We’re going to keep grinding, we’re going to keep pushing until we land our first client. Then, we’re going to delight the heck out of them.
Follow along to get updates on Better Product Company as we come to life. Check us out at www.betterproduct.co and feel free to contact us at hello@betterproduct.co or on Twitter @betterproductco!
