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Since March 2008, FountainBlue has run a three-month Funding Road
Trip Series in the spring and fall/winter to assist early-stage, funding-bound
pairs of high tech, clean energy and life science entrepreneurs to think
through their companys offerings as well as the market opportunity, and then
communicating that opportunity succinctly and compellingly to strategic
investors, culminating in a third workshop featuring a pitch to active
investors.
This first workshop of the series focuses on Your Positioning,
with modules on top ten mistakes in business plans and positioning. The second
follow-up workshop focuses on the refining Your Pitch to Investors and the final
workshop, Your Meeting with Investors, which is by invitation-only for past workshop attendees, and features actual
presentations to angel and other investors. Please note that this event
precludes service providers, unless they are event sponsors.
By Invitation Only, for Participants of the Past Two Workshops in the Series
FountainBlue Funding Road Trip: Your Meeting with Investors Date and Time: Friday, May 7, 8:30 a.m. until 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: $83 for FountainBlue members, $93 for Partners, $103 General
Registration: Use the adjacent PayPal link by Wednesday, May 5 at noon
Late and On-Site Registration: $103 for members, $124 for non-members
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
FountainBlue Funding Road Trip: Your Company Value Proposition
Date and Time: Friday, October 1, 8:30 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.
Location: TBD
Audience: Early-Stage, Funding-Bound Clean Energy, High Tech and Life
Science Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs
Cost for 2 Entrepreneurs: $83 for FountainBlue members, $93 for
Partners, $103 General
On-Site Registration is $103 for members, and $123 for non-members
FountainBlue is pleased to launch its fall 2010 Funding Road Trip
Series, the first of a three-month workshop series serving high tech, clean
energy and life science entrepreneurs within Silicon Valley. This first workshop of this spring 2010 series focuses on Your
Company Value Proposition, with a module on top ten mistakes in business plans and
positioning. Our November 5 follow-up workshop will focus on Your Pitch to Investors
and our invitation-only December 3 workshop, Your Meeting with Investors, is only open to past workshop attendees, and will feature presentations to angel and other investors.
Agenda for the Your Company Value Proposition 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 will 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.
10:15Break
10:30 Your 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 and also includes powerful
and practical techniques from market research pros to validate your customers
real pain points and the value of your painkiller. Participants will be taught
how to use this tool which is based on a case-study example of a real startup
12:00Lunch Break and
Networking
12:30Optional Working Session,
with Feedback
1:00Adjourn and Networking
FountainBlue
Funding Road Trip: Perfecting Your Pitch to Investors
Date and Time: Friday, November 5, 8:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.
Location: tbd
Audience:Early-Stage, Funding-Bound Clean
Energy, High Tech and Life Science, No Service
Providers, Please
Cost for 2
Entrepreneurs: $83 for FountainBlue members, $93 for Partners, $103 General
Registration: Please pre-register by noon on 11/3 using the
adjacent PayPal link
Late and On-Site Registration is
$103 for members and $124 for non-members for one or two entrepreneurs.
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, which follows the first workshop entitled Your Company
Value Proposition, 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. Attendance at one of the two
workshops in the series is a pre-requisite to attending our third and final
workshop in the series, Your Meeting with Investors, which features feedback
from active investors.
For this workshop, 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.
Whether you are
a serial entrepreneur, or someone playing with an idea in the back of your
mind, you are sure to benefit from the information presented, the connections
made and the peer-to-peer knowledge shared.
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.
We welcome your questions or comments about our next upcoming event and about our series. Send any inquiries to info@fountainblue.biz.
Testimonials about the Series:
I
found Bill Joos presentations for FountainBlue 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!
The series is by far the best I've ever attended. Hands down.
Bill Joos got me unstuck and focused.
It was inspiring and practical and delivered very real results for us. I recommend to every entrepreneur I know.
Thanks
to FountainBlue for organizing the Funding Road Trip workshops. We
really appreciate our instructor Bill Joos' fabulous speech and
conversation, and all the 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.
Because of your personal assistance, the
entire funding road trip process, and the people that Ive met through your
events, our progression has been much faster than I would have thought
possible. Thank you sooooooo much!!!
FountainBlues 3 part Funding Road Trip were
by far and away, the single most informative and useful workshops I have ever
attended.
I found Bill Joos presentations for FountainBlues Funding
Road Trip Series to be candid, engaging, and full of specific and
practical advice which Ive 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.
We are pleased to acknowledge and thank our cross-marketing partners for this series.
We welcome you to partner with us to promote this series, and we welcome the opportunity to promote your Silicon Valley entrepreneurial event to our community as well.
We are grateful to the sponsors of our series, and urge you to consider their services.
