Resilient

8Accelerators and Pitch Competitions? Bang or Bust

I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn't been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn't have been lucky.

—Oprah Winfrey

Let's start with pitch competitions. I feel that the goal of pitch competitions has changed over the past few years—and not necessarily for the better. At one point, I felt that pitch competitions were held to position startups for opportunities to align with investors in their respective sectors. This is still the case in many instances, as it's still not uncommon to see winners of competitions like TechCrunch Disrupt go on to raise millions of dollars for their startup. The upside to pitch competitions is that their nondilutive capital (most times) allows an early startup the much-needed capital to continue to build out their minimal product, make that hire, or extend its overall runway. When you think about it, you can't really beat that, if you win. The downside to pitch competitions is that they can be less about who has the best idea or company and more about who has the best pitch. Judges often have very limited information related to the company they are judging, and they are making a decision based on a 3- to 10-minute pitch. Thus, whoever has the best crafted pitch is most likely going to win the competition. What I have also noticed about pitch competitions over the years is that they have been used as a way for large companies to boast their commitments to ...