FUND Conference is an annual assembly of ideologists which connects the Chicago based startups to the Venture Capitalist in a competition format. A race where over 100 entrepreneurs participate to earn an individual One on One 10 minutes time with the investors.
The conference started by a networking kickoff on the evening of Day 1 at The Godfrey hotel, Chicago. It was an opportunity for the companies to get to know each other, the competition and the investors, so that they can do their research before the competition.
Day 2 was where all the startups were required to give out a 2 min pitch each. Based on this pitch, the attendees would vote for whichever ones they liked the most. Top 10 companies will be awarded the chance to pitch directly for 10 minutes to the investors. Personally, I felt there were numerous loopholes in the voting system as it allowed any non-attendee to vote. This enables any team to have an “x” number of votes and rip off the ones who were more deserving. However, it was balanced since the investors had the power to choose 4-5 teams additionally. Due to some technical difficulties, this award ceremony was pushed for Day 3 and the voting reopened.
Day 3 kicked off by a very motivational keynote by Michael Dermer, CEO/Founder, “The Lonely Entrepreneur”, a platform that helps entrepreneur deal with the real struggle and guides them towards a right path. Michael talked about how his 10 yr old firm which just started making revenue was amidst the 2008 financial crisis, and he went on explaining how he sailed out of that storm by changing his perspective. He defines this change in perspective with various analogies:
- Know what innings you are in
- Don’t evaluate your life in the middle of a fight
- Know where you need help
- Find playgrounds where no one is playing
- Why build a Rocket when NASA has plenty
The biggest take away from this session was “When you pitch to an investor, don’t brag about yourself, let your customers and partners talk for you. Put your weaknesses upfront with an executable plan of your vision on how are you going to come up with that weaknesses, which will in turn reason out your demand for the funding.”
The rest of the day was split into two parts, one room hosted various panels, and the second room was an expo hall where these startups showcased their ideas and gained deeper insight from the attendees.
One company (I prefer not to name them) which really confused me was based on Internet of Things, had an amazing product design, a fully functioning prototype, a very high end luxury model, but a poor future vision for this model. They priced the product extremely high (above 3 figures) and talked about mass marketing it, even to the millennials. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, the first rule of marketing is to “Know your Audience”, and I got reviews from people saying “But every one knows this, what is new about it?”. Well, it is for reasons like this product why I stressed on the basics. The best strategy for that company would be to target high end luxury markets and slowly create a demand to the lower markets from their brand value. This is the strategy that Tesla used, and it has been a success.
The day ended with the award ceremony where top 10 teams were selected via voting and 4 additional teams were selected by the group of investors. These teams will start scheduling their time with the investors in the coming week. In a future post, I will release the names and descriptions about these companies, so Stay tuned.
“Entrepreneurship is not a job, it is an identity – Michael Dermer, The Lonely Entrepreneur”
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