How to Pitch an App at a Hackathon
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Presentation on the components of an effective app pitch. Prepared for and presented to developer at Intuit's QuickBooks Connect Hackathon, Oct. 21, 2014.
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How to Pitch an App at a Hackathon
- 1. #QBConnect
- 2. Pitching AWESOME Gretchen Salyer October 21, 2014
- 3. #QBConnect 4 STEPS TO AN AWESOME PITCH! Elevator Pitch The Solution The PROBLEM Why you are a winner 1 2 3 4
- 4. The PROBLEM Why you are a winner #QBConnect 4 STEPS TO AN AWESOME PITCH! Teaser goes here DEMO goes here Elevator Pitch The Solution 3 Minutes!! 1 2 3 4
- 6. #QBConnect MAKE THE TEASER MEMORABLE! “You spend the majority of your life working for your money… but do you know how your money works for you?” - Aaron Patzer, Founder Mint.com
- 7. Remember to mention which track you are on #QBConnect 1. Brand new QBO App 2. Payments API 3. QBO New Feature for Existing App
- 8. #QBConnect 1 ELEVATOR PITCH
- 9. #QBConnect 20 SECONDS “Mint is a free personal finance app, it’s about 10x easier than Microsoft Money, you can set it up in 2 minutes and it actually helps make you money” - Aaron Patzer, Founder Mint.com
- 10. #QBConnect The bigger the pain… 2 THE PROBLEM the better!
- 11. #QBConnect “I don’t have any idea how I’m spending my money or if my money is working for me”
- 12. #QBConnect The bigger the pain… the better! REMEMBER! The problem ALWAYS comes BEFORE the Solution!
- 13. #QBConnect 3 THE SOLUTION
- 14. How do you solve the problem? “Brings the power of the web to your finances… for free” - Aaron Patzer, Founder Mint.com #QBConnect + =
- 15. #QBConnect • Have one speaker & one driver • Make time to practice • Your demo won’t work • Have screen shots as back-up Practice… Practice… Practice
- 16. #QBConnect Don’t forget the DATA How does your solution use the QuickBooks Data to delight customers!
- 17. #QBConnect WHY YOU ARE A 4 WINNER
- 18. #QBConnect • Why customers will use your app • Why you will win against competition • Why you deserve to win this hack-a-thon • Opportunity to re-state elevator pitch
- 19. #QBConnect Watch out for “PITCH PITFALLS” • If doing intros… do them quickly • Don’t talk and drive • Be specific… don’t rely on buzzwords • Slow down… seriously, slow down • Seem confident
- 20. #QBConnect RECAP Elevator Pitch The Solution The PROBLEM Why you are a winner 1 2 3 4
- 21. #QBConnect The Criteria Do I need it? Quality of Solution? Is it Unique? Is it written in code? 25% 50% 20% 5%
- 22. #QBConnect Q&A
Editor's Notes
- Points: Excited to have everyone here – seems like there are a lot of great apps / projects being created Thank you for participating Excited to partner with you all in creating a truly awesome ecosystem for small businesses & accountants. Gretchen Overview: @ Intuit 8 years Private Equity investor prior to Intuit @ Summit Partners Corporate Development for 4 years – Business Development for 4 years Gretchen intro: Introduction of yourself (Intuit for 7 years; currently working on the small business BD team. Joined the company in our M&A group and prior to Intuit worked in private equity at Summit partners.) Excited to be part of this effort and looking forward hearing about from the teams about what they have built as part of this Hack-a-thon. I wanted to also take this opportunity to thank you for participating. We are certainly very excited to partner with all of you in the future with the goal of building a global QBO ecosystem We are only going to take you away from coding for about 30 min here, so let’s get started.
- One approach to delivering an awesome pitch to our panel of judges There are a lot of you today… and you only have 3 min to sum up all of the work you’ve been doing over the two days, so we wanted to try to give you some helpful tips… and put some of our own people on the spot, ask them to pitch their own ideas to you. Think of your pitch as an opportunity to quickly… very quickly show the world (and the judges) the problem you are solving, how you are solving it, and why your solution is the best solution out there. It’s a tall order, but we are super excited about some of the development going on here today, so we know it’s all going to culminate in some AWESOME pitches.
- Like most good ideas…you want to whet appetites for what is to come. Think of a teaser to introduce the awesome solution you have built… And this is a Hack-a-thon, so there is a demo to this process as well. Be sure not to get ahead of yourself in any of these steps. Leave an appropriate amount of time for the solution to demonstrate the hard work and your awesome product…
- Come up with other slogans
- Let’s start with the teaser…think of a slogan that embodies your solution…speaks about your customers, their pain points which you are solving. [(Built Ford Tough) or (Improving people's financial lives so profoundly that they can't imagine going back to the old way.) or (Don’t leave home without it.) (The king of beers.)] just to name a few
- Let’s move onto thinking about the elevator pitch session… Simplify the story… 20 seconds State the problem…describe the pain points…and tell me about how you solved this. There are details that you perhaps would like to share about the nature of the problem, the size, scope, who it affects. Feel free to put yourselves in the shoes of the SMB. And think of it from the customer perspective…
- Narrow in on the pain you are solving… in some ways, you are making a case that there is a market here for your solution. Tell us about the pain you are solving… how big of a problem is it? Who is it a problem for? Usually the more pervasive the problem…the more the opportunity for market…but also the greater the competition.
- Sometimes…we lose ourselves in the solution. We get carried away, so caught up in the awesome technology that we have built and the blood, sweat and tears that we have put into the amazing solution that we lose sight of “The What” and “The Who” We built the solution to solve…XYZ problem and we built this for customers This can be challenging but let’s not lose sight of remembering the problem…at Intuit we have a process called “Follow Me Homes” where Intuit employees travel to the homes of small businesses. We learn how customers use our products and how we can be better at serving them. I have been on xx Follow Me Homes…it always help ground me our Mission here at Intuit which is to serve SMB customers, where QB is the operating system and our ecosystem supports QB’s success
- We have spoken a little bit about the problem and putting that into the context of the customer pains…now let’s move to the solution…what you have built today. Sometimes this is an easy answer…here is a solution that solves you getting from Point A to B…but let’s consider in this example…how is this different, better… Mint enables users to: See all of your accounts together, from checking and savings to credit cards and retirement Mint automatically pulls in and categorizes your transactions daily; no need to enter your own transactions Mint can create a budget based on your actual spending, or you can create your own Avoid late fees and monitor cash flow; stay up-to-date with email or text alerts for budgets, fees, due dates, low balances, unusual activity, and more
- And, this is the most exciting part the Demo…but as we know…practice makes perfect. Be sure to script the lines, read them, practice with folks and help each other in the spirit of collaboration. Some helpful ideas also would be to have screen shots in case something does go awry.
- All of us at Intuit are aware of the power of Big Data. We live this every day with our QB products. And, we all understand that there are opportunities to delight customers by using this data. Within the Intuit ecosystem, we sometimes think of [xx] or Mint – where you log in, give some passwords and …Delight. You see a snapshot of your spending habits and realize I spend too much on lattes or dinners out. The power of data especially in the QB framework is enormous and there is a large opportunity to unlock this and delight customers.
- Remember there is always gold at the end of the rainbow so tell us why you will win…it is not always about monetization, as we all know that there are plenty of free apps to customers that monetize on the back end…instead I would challenge you to think of this in the framework of delighting customers…customers will use this (may or may not pay for it) because of X or Y or Z and will be demonstrated in active usage, Net Promotor Score, attach or add revenue… And…don’t forget to restate the pitch…tell us again so we don’t foget
- Need for it (25%) – Does it solve a big problem? Is the application warranted? Quality of solution (50%) – How has the problem been solved? Could it likely address new problems down the line in its current form? Uniqueness (20%) – How is this application better than existing applications? Submitted Entry is written in code (5%)