MSB Drinks & Pitch Night — August 2017
We had 181 RSVPs from regular, newbie and curious Silicon Beachers for the August MSB Drinks and Pitch Night on Thursday 3rd August. The weather outside was miserable — cold, windy and drizzly. Even though it was warm and cosy inside the grand old Royal Melbourne Hotel, our preferred venue for the past 4 years, we would have been happy with a 50% turnout.
We had much more. In fact, we think around 150 turned up. We don’t really know for sure because we don’t bother counting. We don’t ask if they are hackers, hustlers or hipsters (many are all three and more). We don’t stick nametags on them. Everybody is encouraged to connect like normal humans do, with a handshake, eye contact and then maybe a LinkedIn connection or an email. Some even had those things called ‘business cards’.
It is heartening to see so many join our Slack on the night. It’s the engine room of our 100% volunteer run community. We don’t waste our volunteers’ valuable time on meetings. Everything happens on Slack. If we do need meetings for a special event — i.e. Melbourne Knowledge Week or the upcoming #SiliconHack (more on that in the video below), we just Zoom.
Here’s the video from the night.
0:00 t0 9:00 Welcome by the team
Intro by our MC for the night John, founder of Shiftz, Co-organiser of MSB and a member of Editorial team at SiliconNews.
Alexar, our roving organiser & the main connector of the nationwide silicon Beach network of communities brought us upto speed on the Canberra startup scene. Checkout Canberra Innovation Network.
Athula mentioned SiliconNews (you are reading it). Checkout and bookmark our ongoing projects — SiliconCalendar & SiliconSchool
Shout outs to sponsors
MYOB — Sponsor of the Night. Thanks for the unlimited bar tab and finger food. That was an unexpected but very welcome surprise. You guys are the BEST!
Razor Sharp Show for putting on the first SiliconSchool workshop — Learn to Podcast. Get your free ticket now, only a few places remaining for Tuesday Aug 8th.
Unstuck. Sponsoring a double pass to one lucky pitcher
90 second Pitches.
9:00 Tania. Great Debate. Can Entrepreneurship be taught?
10:35 Grego : XShopper
11:43 Chinmay: AltMail
Here’s their video
16:18 Bryan: Brandello Marketing
18:06 Dee. Reputationaire
21:00 Gene. City Mapper
23:35 Joel: Future Music Industry Network (FMIN)
25:42 Alex. GovHack volunteer. Connect with Alex on our Slack.
28:05 Ravi. Adext.
29:42 Roy. Inventor of a new construction bolt. Roy, please send us your contact details or join us on Slack so we can post it here. This blog will be seen by investors.
31:58 Georgina: Flive
35:15 Tuck. Blinxel. Augmented Reality (AR) company. Looking for sales & marketing people. Tuck, join us on Slack.
30 sec pitches
37:40 Alexar : lnvitation to collaborate with GovHack. Connect with Alexar on our Slack.
38:40 Athula : Peninsula Hackathon
and SiliconSchool
If you couldn’t join us this month, join us next month
We don’t apologise for the fact that our videos are not the best quality. They are filmed on an iPhone. You know what one angel investor who regularly watch our Pitch Night videos told us? “I don’t care about the quality as long as I can hear and see. If I like what I see, I will reach out to him/her”. So there.
Most of our founders (with some exceptions) are at idea stage or very early stage. They are not yet investable. And not everyone is looking to raise funds. Many bootstrap.
It doesn’t hurt to start the conversation with investors early in the journey. Real life is not a Shark Tank. Deals take time.
Exposure is only one objective of these pitch nights. The main objective is to offer a safe place for first time founders and techies where they can get up and pitch. No pressure, no judgement. Many of our pitchers are pitching in public for the first time.
There are no hoops to jump, no forms to fill, no application process. Just turn up, put your hand up and pitch. But it doesn’t hurt to book in your slot early via meetup or Slack because our pitch nights are getting popular.
Thank you so much for the volunteers who helped this night happen. Without them Silicon Beach is nothing.
John for putting his hand up and doing a magnificent job as the MC for the night. John is the founder of Shiftiez, a collaborative shift management platform, and an editor of SiliconNews.
Rogan for welcoming everyone, talking to them and then keeping everyone quiet during the pitches.
Alexar, Silicon Beach’s Tech Lead & roving ambassador for jumping on a plane and getting to the event in time from Canberra.
Aish (a.k.a Coder Juliet) for holding the iPhone up for 45mins so we have a video of the night. Aish is an accomplished iOS develper and editor at SiliconNews.
Harjit for filming on his HD video camera. When we figure out how to transfer that file to YouTube, we might have a better video.
The Event Hosts present on the night will vote on Slack privately to select the winning pitch. Winner will get a double pass to UNSTUCK, a fantastic new event coming up in Melbourne.
For future Pitch Nights we are looking at Loopt, an Aussie app for pitch nights designed for audience and judges. It is currently in beta testing and you will hear a lot about it in the coming months.
Were you at the meetup? Even if you weren’t, watch the video above and give us your feedback. Comment below or on Slack. You can also comment via Meetup or email siliconnewseditor at gmail dot com.
If you like what you see, please click the heart symbol below. Share with your network. Follow us on Medium.
If you are in Melbourne join us next month. It’s always on the first Thursday of the month. RSVP on Meetup.
If not in Melbourne, please join us on Silicon Beach Oz Slack. We have members from all over the world.
See you on the Beach.
