How to Prepare Better for Your Startup Idea Pitch

I have been invited as a judge by different incubation centers and I've evaluated hundreds of startups. Along with different local incubation centers, I'm also a senior member of an American Startup Incubation Company "Startup Ecology".

I've got very few (less than a dozen) startups that grab my attention and I made up my mind to immediately invest with them if they will work at the same pace.

But...

The majority of startups were still in the stone age and after 2-3 years they are still in the idea phase and never implemented that.

I've got some of the problems from those pitches that almost every startup was facing and I want to provide a solution to that.

1. Know Your Business

The majority of startup founders didn't know more about their business or had only a few lines about their business to explain. They don't have answers to technical questions. No emotional attachment or goals for their business.

2. Long Term Planning

Surprisingly there was no long-term planning from their side. The majority of the time, they only want to get investment or place from these incubations. I've even seen some startups applying for the same space to 3-4 times. They didn't scale.

3. Presentation

Sometimes incubations have multiple and people are pitching their business ideas on that but sometimes they don't have that facility. The worst thing is that startups don't have any backup for presenting their idea or any visual/printed things.

4. Cross-Functional Teams

The majority of teams are composed of people of class fellows or friends. The problem is that because they have the same educational background they don't know the other aspects of business. If some ideas are from fine arts department students, they don't know how to market them or create a website and this will add costs that they cannot bear.

5. Don't Have Trust on Anyone

They don't have trust in anyone. They have a fear that someone will steal their idea. Because their scope is very small, they never work with persons that they don't know previously, so they think that every person will steal their idea.

6. Prototype

Some startups that are working on some product or software, even don't have their prototypes. I was astonished when even social media marketing agency startups don't have their social media channels.

7. Research

Very few startups have their ideas backed by some research. But most don't have any research on their own business and alternatives. Or even sometimes they are working on seasonal things and think that this will evergreen business.

8. Industry Study

They don't study the industry or competitors, mostly they answer that nobody is working on this thing but the reality is that people have been working on those things for years.

9. Financial Model

Mostly the investors want to know how they will be compensated if they invest. Startups don't have the answer to that. Even some startups don't know their breakeven point.

10. Evaluation from Industry Expert

Most of the incubation centers are in Universities and university lecturers or professors are evaluating these ideas. Mentorship sessions are also done by them (mostly). But sorry to say that there's no linkage or industry-academia in here, so they cannot provide them upto date knowledge about their industry to scaling tips.

So my suggestion is that think like a businessman or startup, not as a student or part-time person. If you are good at something or have any idea, these incubation centers are there to facilitate your ideas and will push you but don't take that space as lifetime office space. If you haven't converted your idea into a successful business, then you don't deserve that space again. Do something else and leave that idea for some doer that will better convert that.