Rise to the Challenge
"I need to explain my idea in 300 words or less?"
That's almost like an "executive summary" or something. For ages past, aspiring entrepreneurs have had to develop the skill to distill their grand plans of world domination into a few concise sentences. Some might call it an elevator pitch, others an executive summary or a spiel. Give us your best summary of a business idea, and if we like it we will help you expand that idea into something greater.
Refining concepts and ideas into something short and sweet can be tough, so we thought we'd share some resources that inspire us. We're not going constrain you into a specific format to begin with, so think about whether you'd like to send us a video, some slides, or just a well written letter. Here are some real life examples of people and companies that learned how to convey their ideas well:
This is the first pitch deck Foursquare ever showed investors.
AirBnB is now a $1.3 billion dollar company because of their first presentation.
Alex White gets his presentation dissected.
A search through your favorite YouTube / Google / Blog will give you loads of information. Just search for things like "pitch competition", "pitch deck", "business plan", "executive summary", and so on. And again, you choose the format in which you'd like to make an impression on us. We'll get to the nitty gritty later.
Quora has entire discussions on good presentations.
You don't have to be inventing the next Facebook to win some cold hard cash from the Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. But if these geeks can clearly communicate their concept, you can to!
If you have questions, please email cei@ubalt.edu