Here are some Do’s:

1. Do get yourself a clicker and use the space (Time allocated).  Engage with your audience through motion, eye contact and body language. The best presentations are conducted by passionate, animated entrepreneurs who do not hide behind the podium. While presenting don’t forget to target your key audience. These are the people who likely have investment funds.
2. Do provide factual and validated information.  If you are ever caught lying, or perceived as deceitful, you’re dead.  Period.
3. Do rehearse.  Practice your pitch, and get the timing down.  Every group will have a different format.  Sometimes you’ll have 15 minutes to pitch and sometimes you’ll have less.  Sometimes there will be lots of questions with little time to respond.  Other times there will be few questions and dead air.  Tailor your pitch to each time frame and practice.  If you are new, put the important stuff up front.  If you are a pro, you will have your pitch timing down and you won’t run out of time in any situation.  Be a pro.
4. Do tell us ‘Why You’?  Ideas are cheap, execution is everything.  Why are you going to be successful with this idea?  Is your team awesome?  Say so. 

Here are some Don’ts:

1. Don’t throw out large numbers.  Don’t use the size of the market to try to reflect the size of what you think your business will be.  Any major market is in the billions and trying to relate your company revenue to that is just ridiculous at this point when you barely have a validated product.  Don’t suggest that you can even capture 1% of it, that is an unsubstantiated number (since unvalidated isn’t a proper word).
2. Don’t use baseless information.  This is tough, but try to validate information in any way possible.  What have other companies done in the past?  How long did it take them to break into the market?  What market share does the leader have? Have you ever spoken with a customer to see what they think?
3. Don’t create crazy projections.  Be realistic. If you think you can turn your startup into a $100M venture in a niche industry in 5 years, you clearly don’t have any idea what you are talking about.  Refer to number #2.  What have others done?
4. Don’t be sloppy.  Nothing makes you look worse than showing up in jeans and a t-shirt (be appropriate for the venue) or have a PowerPoint deck with bad graphics, and a poor layout.  Do your research and make sure you put your best foot forward.

Most of all though, have fun.  When you get to the point where this starts to get serious and you are raising money, you may give this pitch 1000 times (a number thrown out recently by a very successful entrepreneur) to get what you ultimately want.  You are going to get tired, but you need to keep it real, energetic, and have fun with it.  Good luck out there! 

Startup Weekend is an innovative concept, where by in one weekend, just a mere 54 hours, you can go from nothing to a viable company.

Anidea Engineering’s owner, Gabriel Goldstein, attended his first Startup Weekend in 2013 in West Palm Beach.  Although not a Startup company, Gabriel knows there is always something to learn. 

It starts with an opening event with a speaker, then attendees start getting down to business: What is your idea?

They make pitches, wait anxiously as their peers choose which pitches seem the most viable, and then, as ideas are weeded out, groups begin to form. Inspirational speakers tell of their entrepreneurial experiences. Then, they get to work.  break for the night. Day 1 is complete. 

Day 2 begins bright and early, with budding entrepreneurs ready to make something happen. They quickly get to work, feeling the pressure as time trickles away, far too quickly for their liking. Day 3, Sunday, they continue working until it is time. The groups present their companies, and a winner is chosen.

Startup Sponsor / Supporter / Mentor

In 2013, Goldstein worked on an app – YO! – that facilitated conversation between bartenders and patrons in a loud, crowded atmosphere. The would-be drinker communicates visually through the app to the bartender, creating an ease-of-ordering that can’t be beat.

Unfortunately, the team did not win. However, Goldstein not only met some great friends but still to this day, is an experienced entrepreneur who avidly supports the startup community.  He was bitten by the ‘Startup Weekend’ bug and his team was featured in a newspaper article about the event.

Being an entrepreneur is not new to Goldstein. After all, he started Anidea Engineering with literally, just an idea. He has since leveraged his experience to become one of the speakers and sponsors at 2014’s Startup Weekend West Palm Beach, and a mentor and sponsor at Startup Weekend Miami-FIU, which took place Friday, Nov. 20-22, 2015.

Mentoring is not new to Goldstein who has worked with various clients for the last 15 years, helping to mold and shape many of their companies. In addition, he is a mentor at FAU’s Tech Runway, a collaborative work space for entrepreneur to house, educate, mentor and fund their companies from inception through venture funding.

Goldstein used his mentoring experience to assist the teams at Startup Weekend.

“I got to work with a lot of different companies,” Goldstein said. “I was a huge fan of it. It is so much fun to see these companies start from nothing and become something.”

 “As a mentor, it was a lot of fun to go around and challenge the teams on their ideas and make them question things. One of the biggest things about Startup Weekend is validation. Everyone thinks they have a good idea, until you go out and test it in the marketplace,” he said.

Testing the ideas led to some of their downfalls, and others readjusted, reevaluated, tweaked their ideas, and came up with something stronger and more viable.

Working with a younger demographic – many of the participants were college students – did not have the same experiences that Goldstein has had, which shaped their projects and approaches. For example, one group learned about credit card processing, and how small transactions do not lend to a profit.

“As a mentor, I was able to bring my entrepreneurial and life experiences to the table to challenge and guide the teams. I’ve had the advantage of seeing technology evolve in the last 20 years that many of the attendees – bright, gifted students – did not,” Goldstein said, explaining that although he has accumulated years, he still has the same energetic, inquisitive, entrepreneurial spirit that helped him create Anidea Engineering.

Goldstein enjoying one of the more entertaining parts of Startup Weekend.

The teams worked hard on their ideas, testing and learning along the way.

“The incredible value of Startup Weekend is that you have the opportunity to go through many of the processes that you would go through in a team format to launch a company, with very little risk involved. It’s a vast learning experience,” he said.

Former attendees have reached out to Goldstein, as a mentor, and a networking connection.

“It’s a really great organization that I highly recommend for anyone who wants to learn about entrepreneurship and starting their own company and to participate in,” he said. “I’ll participate in any one I’m ever invited to, or any other way I can possibly participate.”

To learn more, visit www.anidea-engineering.com or call us at (561) 383-7311. Check us out and see how we can help you. Have an idea? Get Anidea! We’re located at 8020 Belvedere Road, Suite 1 in West Palm Beach Florida. Not local? Call and we can set up a Skype conversation at gabriel.goldstein.anidea.