
With the SXSW Accelerator wrapping up this weekend and applications for Y Combinator's Summer 2016 funding cycle due next week, the season of startup pitch competitions and demo days is well under way. Here in the Mid-Atlantic, MAVA is set to announce its slate of TechBuzz startups for its April 6th pitch competition and Mach37's cyber accelerator Spring 2016 Cohort kicks off this week as well. So what does it take to deliver an effective investor pitch?
According to Reid Hoffman at Greylock, "In a single year, the classic general partner in a venture firm is exposed to around 5,000 pitches; decides to look more closely at 600 to 800 of them; and ends up doing between 0 and 2 deals." Those odds are never in your favor. So how, out of thousands of startup presentations, hundreds of pitch competitions and dozens of demo days do you increase your probability of success to make your pitch stand out?