Our 20 minutes at a Start-Up Accelerator.
Kim Slade — Unknown Epic
So a famous bank is funding an accelerator program, incubator, investment…thing. We are a start-up and skint with not a great deal of ‘business’ knowledge so though we’d give it a shot.
As we waited for our turn in this grey sterile room we said to the others waiting, “hey why don’t we practice on each other” nobody seemed too keen so we stepped up and gave our 60 second pitch. Another guy nervously took his turn and had a great idea around helping people with sleep problems. The room began to discuss both our ideas and ask questions. We tried to give sleepy guy some ideas and our perspective to help where possible. There was this other guy there just, well… being a bit of a prick. He did not even have the decency to start his angry tirade with the dreaded “I’m just playing devils advocate here” He was giving sleepy guy a real hard time and not being very constructive so we started sticking up for him. Angry man starts on us.
He was asking more questions before we’d finished answering them thinking he was Alan Sugartits. When we say our target market is business owners looking for ways to improve the lives of their employees, he scoffs and says “People who own businesses are horrible people” he goes on “I couldn’t count on one hand the amount of leaders who care about all this well-being la de da” Jake promptly replies with “I can”. He has obviously not heard about The Happy Start-Up School. I say “well we don’t want to work with those types of people, we want to work with awesome people (not you angry man)”. With the upmost sarcasm and a fold of the arms he promptly responds with “Good luck”.
What a bell end. (is it ok to write bell end on Medium?).
We would like to think that haters gonna hate and some people who hold the purse strings do actually care. So we would like to ask you this if you are a business owner, MD or team leader: Would you invest in giving your people a life experience that may not have a ‘trackable’ ROI? Please comment below and let us know if angry man is right.
So after that bit of fun we go in to the pitch. We deliver it well and the questions start.
“What’s your vision?”…“We want to be an unique international adventure brand and use theme park earth to help people release their inner hero”
“What kind of growth do you see in the next year?” at this point we lean back on our chairs and start to go through how we see it panning out for us with the ever-present bantering between ourselves. The look of shock on their faces at our relaxed approach and, as we explain how we are cutting down on time to actually get more done with love, is hilarious. We explained that we aim to be beautifully honest to our customers and about the creation of the brand but at that point maybe Jake took it a bit too far for this setting. They exclaim “We are looking for people who want rapid growth, who are willing to dedicate everythi…Jake calmly interrupts “We just want to take it easy man.” *Interviewer literally facepalms.
I know what he means so feel the need to explain in terms they may understand. “We are not looking to expand rapidly, float on the stock market and sell out. We want to create life changing experiences for people and make our lives a wonderful adventure in doing so. We need accelerating from the point we are at now because we are doing this in our spare time and want to make it our living.” They call time on the interview.
We wait patiently for what seemed like ages for the elevator doors to close. As soon as they do we burst out laughing, which they must have heard.
We walk out the building, get in the car and Jake says “I think we’re in.”
A little bit of me actually thinks they may ask us back just for bants. We could have gone in and gave them what they wanted to hear. Instead we kept the faith and truth in ourselves and didn’t shape-shift just because people were wearing suits. We believe that most people don’t want bullshit anymore and those that do, we don’t want to work with them.
