Entrepreneurs take stage to woo venture capitalists
Phoenix Business Journal - by Tara Teichgraeber The Business Journal
It was the ultimate litmus test for the venture-capital game.
Given 10 minutes to present, could an entrepreneur make a roomful of venture capitalists drool for a stake in his business?
Bill Teags had his chance Nov. 8 at a dress-rehearsal of his presentation for the Arizona Venture Capital Conference in December.
He is among the entrepreneurs chosen to tout their business plans at the annual conference. Each had a chance to make their pitch for money last week as a panel of venture capitalists critiqued their performance.
But rather than make the test audience drool, Teags' presentation about xPackage.com Inc. came off rather "dry."
"You're not excited about this; you're monotonic," said venture capitalist Harry George, a partner with Solstice Capital, Tucson. "You're not going to get us excited."
Another venture capitalist told Teags he needed "another cup of espresso," which led to good-natured ribbing from his partners after the presentation.
In a post-show meeting with mentors who have been helping Teags prepare his presentation, he plopped down, rubbed his face and said, "I know, my wife told me this, too."
Mentors immediately suggested Teags ditch his note cards.
"That'll be tough ... OK," he replied.
"You know the industry very, very well," added mentor Karen Blandini from Nest Ventures LLC. "I don't want you to give the impression that you don't because you're reading cards. I've seen you get excited about this idea. I know you can."
Teags has spent the past month working with a team of mentors to boil down his entire business model into a concise, clear 10-minute presentation for the AVCC.
Initially, it ran 19 minutes, but after three mentoring sessions and lots of practice, Teags was able to deliver his vision in nine minutes and 13 seconds last week.
But the test audience asked for a whole lot more.
"In terms of what to change, there's a lot of stuff in here," Teags said after the presentation. "We need to emphasize more specifics. We were trying to fly at a real high level and we need to drop down a little bit in altitude."
Venture capitalists also told Teags he needed to deliver the market opportunity earlier in his presentation and explain why his idea could win.
They also wanted more detail of his relationships with strategic partners; an explanation of how the business will secure customers; name dropping of any customers testing the product; more detail about his finances, and a sense of how close to the final product xPackage is.
Kirk Westbrook of International Venture Fund asked for an explanation of how the packaging industry currently works, how it's fragmented and why xPackage's application would help.
The Cave Creek-based company hopes to supply an Internet-hosted application that sources packaging goods and coordinates shipments directly from supplier to customer.
The idea is to sell packaging supplies without having to create distribution warehouses around the country.
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