I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
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Had my first NZTE Beachheads Advisory Board meeting yesterday.
This is a great program. We went through it at AfterMail so it was interesting to be on the other side of the table. The NZ Beachhead is the entry point to the program. Once you pass through then you have access to Beachheads Boards in the UK, US, Dubai and others.
The board is very impressive - made up of very experienced and networked people who are giving time back to New Zealand to help others.
It’s not just tech either. Once of the best presentations yesterday was domestic product aimed at the US market. The founder was very experienced and had packaged his offering beautifully for his channel. It was slick and you could see he understood how to make it very easy for his channel to be successful.
Presenting to the Beachhead board would be a great dummy run before you do funding pitches. It’s probably a more supportive audience and they can give you great feedback.
Seeing a number of companies back to back made me think of some general observations regarding how a company presents itself (these are not specifically directed at the companies I saw yesterday) …
- Collateral and image make a disproportionate impression. Not rocket science but spend the money to have it done professionally
- Personality is huge. Enthusiasm and character count for a lot.
- Questions are a key part of the process. Answers generally reveal more than the presentation. You need to know your numbers.
General presentation rules always apply. Respect your time slot, Don’t read the slides (creeping death for the type A’s that are in the room), engage your audience.
You can tell people and companies that really get it. The ones that think about how they fit in with the rest of the world. Here is a simple example.
When you fill in an application form, you may save it as ‘ApplicationForFunding.doc’. You file it under your personal filing hierarchy. You email in your application with an attached doc (always send a pdf!)and it is circulated. From your point of view the naming makes sense. But for the application processing person and evaluation panel you’ve just signaled that you don’t think about things from an outside point of view. Much better to call it ‘AcmeCo_FundingApplication.doc’.
The Beachhead board is a big commitment at a day a month. But I really enjoyed the day and the people. It was great to see there are a bunch of entrepreneurs out there doing the hard yards.
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