I had a great experience as a competitor in the MIC’s recent Pitch & Mingle competition, and I’m very glad to have participated in the event.
This competition was an excellent opportunity to present my work from the past several months as a member of the MIC’s spring Kauffman FastTrac cohort to the larger public. With the help of my pitch coach, Vance McEwin, I worked to refine and condense my message into a single four-minute pitch with a PowerPoint presentation to match.
I put a lot of work into my PowerPoint pitch deck, which was a very useful resource for creating future presentations. The templates I created as part of this competition are valuable assets for my company, which I now use as part of my business workflow. These have allowed me to develop new presentations quickly, without “reinventing the wheel.”
Creating the four-minute presentation made it possible for me to compress my company introduction into a two-minute presentation shown at a recent MIC town hall meeting.
Both presentations have been turned into YouTube videos on my channel. I now include links to these videos with my introductory emails. This has streamlined the process of explaining my solution to people who haven’t heard it before; they can now access a video version. The competition’s time limit ensured these videos were short enough so most people would be willing to view them.
As an audience member, I enjoyed hearing my competitors’ pitches and learning more about their businesses. I saw what strategies they had decided on and how well the audience and the judges received their presentations. Seeing these presentations gave me new ideas for my business that I would never have had.
The competition also introduced me to a group of up-and-coming companies that I could potentially partner with in the future.
Lastly, I honestly really enjoyed the competition trophy. I now have a tangible memento of the first pitch competition I ever participated in. I also have something fun to proudly display in the background for my video conferences!
