FountainBlue designed its Funding Road Trip to prepare early-stage, funding-bound, Silicon-Valley based clean energy, high tech and life science companies for their pitch to investors. We do this through a series of three workshops, conducted on the first Friday of each month for three consecutive months, once in the spring and once in the fall.
The first workshop in the series was launched on March 2008 and helped the workshop participants to define ‘Your Positioning’ and covered your company’s position, the market opportunity and your position in the market. The second workshop, held on April 2008, focused on ‘Your Pitch’ to investors, and included both a detail presentation of the elements of a PowerPoint pitch and a dry run where entrepreneurs pitch to each other in a safe environment. The third workshop, ‘The Meeting’, was held in May 2008, and gave pointers on how to get meetings with investors and how to make a pitch to investors facilitates between qualified entrepreneurs and strategic investors. The invitation-only third workshop facilitated meetings between former workshop participants and actual potential investors who serve as judges. The series was repeated in the fall, on the mornings of September 5, October 3 and November 7, and has continued in the spring and fall of 2009.
Below are the details regarding dates and registrations for the 2009 workshops.
FountainBlue’s Funding Road Trip: Your Meeting with Investors Date and Time: Friday, May 8, 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Location: Cooley Godward Kronish, LLP, 3175 Hanover Street in Palo Alto.
Audience: Early-Stage, Funding-Bound Clean Energy, High Tech and Life Science Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs
Cost for 2 Entrepreneurs: $80 for FountainBlue members, $85 for Partners, $90 General, $100 On-Site
This invitation-only pitch-to-investors workshop is for high tech, life science and clean energy entrepreneurs who have attended the first two workshops in the series, and have successfully created a value proposition, and practiced their pitch to investors. During this third and final workshop in the series, Bill Joos will help you understand how to manage the three critical components of the initial meeting with an investor: your pre-meeting homework, meeting dynamics and management, and the post-meeting follow up.
FountainBlue will invite investors who are actively investing in the spaces of the participating entrepreneurs for real time, measured feedback on pitches. Whether you are a serial entrepreneur, or someone who may be considering a future opportunity, you are sure to benefit from the information presented, the connections made and the peer-to-peer knowledge shared.
Agenda for the Meeting with Investors Workshop: 8:30 Registration and Networking 9:00 Bill Joos: Your Meeting with Investors 10:30 Morning Break 10:45 Investor Pitches, with feedback from investors, each team will get 20 minutes Presentation Format for the Pitch and Meeting Event: Each presentation will take about 15 minutes each, broken down roughly as follows:
·Two minutes, verbal presentation, no interruptions, no handouts or slides
·Two minutes for investor judges to complete questions #1-7 on the evaluation form
·Five minutes of questions from investors
·Two minutes for investors to complete questions #8-9 on the evaluation form
·Five minutes of constructive feedback from peers to the presenter
·Transition time to next speaker is about 5 minutes
12:00 Optional Break 12:15 Investor Sessions, with feedback from investor judges and room facilitators, each team will get 20 minutes total 1:30 Optional Pitch Debrief Meeting Facilitated by Bill Joos 2:00 Adjourn
Register now!
FountainBlue will be continuing the Funding Road trip in the fall 2009.
FountainBlue’s Funding Road Trip: Your Value
Proposition
Date & Time: Friday, September 4, 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Location: Cooley Godward Kronish, LLP, 3175
Hanover Street in Palo Alto
Audience: Early-Stage, Funding-Bound Clean
Energy, High Tech and Life Science Entrepreneurs & Intrapreneurs
Cost for 2: $80 for FountainBlue members, $85
for Partners, $90 General, $100 On-Site
Registration: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=162536 by
Wednesday, September 2 at noon
FountainBlue is pleased to launch its fall Funding Road
Trip Series event, the first of a three-month series serving high tech, clean
energy and life science entrepreneurs within Silicon Valley. Our workshop
series is designed to help entrepreneurs think through their company’s
offerings as well as the market opportunity, and then communicate that
opportunity succinctly and compellingly to strategic investors.
This first workshop of the series focuses on ‘Your
Positioning’, with modules on top ten mistakes in business plans, positioning
and Do It Yourself Customer Research. Our October 2 follow-up workshop will focus
on the pitch to investors and our November 6 workshop will feature presentations to
actual investors.
Agenda for the ‘Your
Positioning’ Workshop:
8:30Networking
and Registration
9:00Welcomes,
Thank Yous and Introductions
9:15Top Ten
Mistakes in Business Plans
Your
business plan is the most important document you'll write as an entrepreneur.
It can be the ticket to funding, and interest from potential clients and
partners. Learn what NOT to do so you can develop a hard-hitting, compelling
business case for your company.
10:00Break
10:15 The Positioning
Before
you can pitch your company to raise funds or attract strategic partners and
alliances, you've got to perfect your positioning. This session will provide
you with a systematic approach to help you better determine your all important
market definition and value propositions. This program features a hard-copy,
walk-away tool that helps define these for a technology based start-up
company.Participants will be taught how
to use this tool which is based on a case-study example of a real startup
11:45Lunch Break
and Networking
12:15Do It
Yourself Customer Research, featuring Dave Kaplow, The FactPoint Group.
Walk
away with five powerful and practical techniques from market research pros to
validate your customers’ real pain points and the value of your painkiller.
12:45Workshop
Debrief Session, with Feedback Given and Homework Assigned
1:00Adjourn and
Networking
Register by Wednesday, March 4 at noon!
FountainBlue’s Funding Road Trip: Perfecting Your Pitch to Investors Date and Time: Friday, October 2, 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Location: Cooley Godward Kronish, LLP, 3175 Hanover Street in Palo Alto.
Audience: Early-Stage, Funding-Bound Clean Energy, High Tech and Life Science Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs
Cost for 2 Entrepreneurs: $80 for FountainBlue members, $85 for Partners, $90 General, $100 On-Site
FountainBlue cordially invites high tech, life science and clean energy entrepreneurs to the second funding preparation workshop entitled Perfecting Your Pitch to Investors. This hands-on workshop, the second in the FountainBlue Funding Road Trip series, will take entrepreneurs through the process of creating and delivering a compelling elevator pitch, a one-page executive summary and a 13-15 slide company overview presentation.
Working in partnership with fellow entrepreneurs in similar, non-competing spaces, participating entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to learn best practices and immediately apply these learnings to their own companies. Whether you are a serial entrepreneur, or someone who may be considering a future opportunity, you are sure to benefit from the information presented, the connections made and the peer-to-peer knowledge shared.
Agenda for the Pitch Workshop: 8:30 Registration and Networking 9:00 Bill Joos: Perfecting Your Pitch to Investors 10:30 Morning Break 10:45 Pitch Practice Sessions, with feedback from fellow entrepreneurs and facilitators, each team will get 15 minutes Presentation Format for the Pitch and Meeting Event: Each presentation will take about 15 minutes each, broken down roughly as follows:
·One minute verbal presentation, no interruptions, no handouts or slides
·One minute for fellow entrepreneurs to complete questions #1-7 on the evaluation form
·Three minutes of questions from peers
·One minute for peers to complete questions #8-9 on the evaluation form
·Four minutes of constructive feedback from peers to the presenter
·Transition time to next speaker is about 5 minutes
12:00 Optional Break 12:15 Pitch Practice Sessions, with feedback from fellow entrepreneurs and room facilitators, each team will get 15 minutes 1:30 Optional Pitch Debrief Meeting Facilitated by Bill Joos 2:00 Adjourn
Register now!
Thank You to Our Partners
We are pleased to partner with the Angels Forum, and the Keiretsu Forum for this workshop series.
Keiretsu Forum
Testimonials About the Series
I found Bill Joos’ presentations for FountainBlue’s Funding Road Trip Series to be candid, engaging, and full of specific and practical advice which I’ve integrated into my presentation approach. I highly recommend the series to fellow entrepreneurs!
Thanks to FountainBlue for organizing the Funding Road Trip workshops. We really appreciate our instructor Bill Joos' fabulous speech and conversation, Cooley's support and nice arrangement, and valuable input from our judges and peer entrepreneurs.It was a greatopportunity to learn and practice!
What a fantastic event series! Bob and I learned so much and also had a great time working with the two of you. Being east coasters, Bob and I marveled at the talent displayed during the time that we all spent together. Nowhere else in the world could you enjoy this kind of event with such an insightful instructor and these kinds of people present.
A first-rate series. I would promote it to anybody who thinks they have a good idea for a business because at the end they will really know if they have a good idea for a business. It is exactly the combination of coaching (from Bill Joos), interaction with investors and general networking that people like me, with nary a business plan and an excitement to do something new and interesting, need to have in order to turn these emphemera into products, customers and cashflow.
Register Now!
Bill Joos, Principal, Go To Market Consulting
About Our Facilitator
Bill Joos is the principal of "Go To Market Consulting", based in Palo Alto, CA. He works with early stage startups, venture capital firms and their portfolio clients. Most recently he spent 6 years as the VP of Entrepreneur Development at Garage Technology Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm that he co-founded along with Guy Kawasaki. His reputation at Garage was that he provided their clients with effective, hands-on, action-oriented strategic and tactical mentoring and coaching. Bill has worked with literally hundreds of early-to-mid stage startups and helped them polish and clarify their messages and refine their fund-raising and customer presentations; but his contributions to them extended well beyond being a "Pitch Doctor". He has mentored and coached them in go to market strategies, revenue and pricing optimization, business alliances, business development, partnerships, and marketing. Over 15,000 entrepreneurs worldwide have attended conferences where Bill has been a featured keynote speaker on various entrepreneurial topics. He has held sales and marketing positions with a variety of companies, including IBM and as a VP of the software division of Apple Computer.
