It’s the dream of every entrepreneur looking to fund a new startup. You’re holding the elevator door open and in walks the investor you’ve been waiting for.
What do you say? Well, after watching the 11th annual Oregon State MBA Business Plan Competition Thursday night, here are some possible strategies:
- Go right into the pitch, and wow them with your market research.
- Take a quick phone call on a successful test of your product.
- Start with an icebreaker, such as “Hey, my power was out last night, how about yours?” or “There’s a gas station down the street. The pump has one slot for your credit card and one for your 401K.”
- Oh, and whatever you chose from above, don’t forget a business card.
Each year the Oregon State MBA Integrated Business Project teams take a real-world technology and spend nine months developing a commercialization plan around it, whether that’s a new company, product, licensing agreement or other plan.
The Business Plan Competition gives the teams a chance to present those plans in front of not only their teachers, advisors and other business professionals but the friends and family members who have watched the entire journey.
Thursday’s competition included a five-minute “Shark Tank”-style pitch to introduce the teams and technologies and the Elevator Pitch, which gave a team member 45 seconds to wow a potential investor.
Each team took a different approach, trying to get the investor’s attention while showing the best their business plan had to offer.
In the end the team of Eric Revell, Bi Tran, Raymond McGuinness, Edward Brown and Kelong Kim took first place for their presentation, including the Elevator Pitch from Brown.
In second was Yi Zhuang, josh McBee, Amanda Williams, Adam Welch and Sarah Che. Third place went to Chalo Masias, Ryan Meyer , Jenny Cheung and Michael Knapp.
I like starting with the icebreaker because this loosens the audience. Particularly, the one about the gas station. It seems to be a conversation starter.