Tonight's EBIG VC/Startup event was our first educational investor pitch practice session - and judging from the comments and feedback, it was a hit (if I may so myself as the totally unbiased organizer). Several folks indicated they'd like to see us do more sessions like it - and want to come and present at future events.
On a 5-point scale, the sessions scored 4.7 for overall effectiveness of the session, 4.6 for presentations being educational and 4.6 for panelists being effective. So hat's off to our presenters and panelists!
We had a full house as about 40 folks went to school - mostly entrepreneurs and investors - as three companies each had 10-minutes to pitch their business idea to our three investor panelists. Our esteemed panel included: Steve Elefant from Claremont Creek Ventures, Greg Beattie from Reed Smith who works with many angel groups and investors and as an angel himself, and Tim Taylor, a pitch coach and consultant working the Band of Angels and other VC and investor groups.
All three had excellent input and feedback for the presenting companies - Raj Baronia from PureMail, an innovative email service provider; Zach Gentry from Adura Technologies, which has a very interesting energy efficient light control solution; and Bill Nye from Espilon Active, which makes a multiplayer computer-projected game that you have to see to believe. Each company is at a slightly different stage in development, but I believe were better than average presentations for companies at their respective stages in development.
I must say I felt very supported by the local entreprenerial community in putting on tonight's event, which is a real testament to the East Bay. Thanks go to our panelists and presenters for all the time and energy they put into preparing and spending the evening with us. I want to thank Scott Gilbert and Dave Weinerth at Technology Ventures Corporation (who, by the way, got unsolicited rave reviews for their work from our panelists) for helping to help us identify presenters among their client base and panelists. Thanks also to Sonja Markova and Rick Choy at the Keiretsu Forum who were also very supportive in helping us find panelists and presenters.
As always, thanks and get well soon wishes to my co-chair, Holly Nelson, at McNichols Randick and her colleage John Neilsen for his help filling in for Holly in orchestrating the event and sponsoring dinner for the group. Finally, thanks to Joy Montgomery for graciously stepping in at the last minute as a volunteer to help coordinate the event, and thanks to Kristen Kuhns at EBIG for her never-ending support for the EBIG organization and this SIG.
Can't wait for next month's session on February 13th! If you haven't already done so, be sure to get notified when our agenda and registration email blast comes out at www.ebig.org - click on "sign up" in the left navigation bar.
