Pitch Arena #1 - Mobile Apps 2009

The #1 Pitch Arena was a success! We had great speakers, interesting presentations and a great audience. A big thanks to those who participated. Though, those who missed it, better be present next time ;-)

See the pictures of the event on Facebook , Meetup , Picasa , Flickr .

Some feedback from the participants:
“ Overall, great initiative, organisation and vibe in the room. Really cool Didier! ”
    — Bart Becks (Jan 17, 2009)
“ De eerste editie van Pitch Arena was sterk ”
    — Nick De Mey (Jan 16, 2009)
“ As an wannabe entrepreneur this gave me a great insight into how to best pitch your product. Hearing from VCs, successfully funded startups and startups looking for funding was a great education and inspiration. ”
    — Bill Griffin (Jan 16, 2009)

 The newly launched concept Pitch Arena is a social networking event for entrepreneurs, investors, mandated business executives, bloggers, and other creative business catalysts active in the following blue oceans: Mobile Apps, Enterprise 2.0, the widgetized web, and the social web.

Whether you're curious to find out if 2009 will be the year for mobile apps, whether the recession is hitting hard in the early stage venturing market, or you just want to pitch your own project, secure funding, get some new leads or like to socialize with like minded creative and entrepreneurial individuals. Pitch Arena will be the evening for you.

  This 1st Pitch Arena is exclusively focusing on Mobile Apps .

There will be 5 pitches from promising start-ups from Belgium, Netherlands, United Kingdom . All companies are beyond the proof of product phase and are looking for money or scale to boost their business.

     Agenda

  18:20 Welcome
  19:00 Introduction
  19:10 VC keynote pitch by Frank Maene, managing partner, Big Bang Ventures about venturing in the midst of the recession
   and entrepreneurship anno 2009
  19:30 Company keynote pitch Nimbuzz (NL) "Growing an international VC backed mobile app business during recession"
  19:50 Product pitches from promising start-ups from Belgium and the Netherlands

              Mobiya (UK/BE) “UK’s fastest growing mobile advertising company for SMS marketing”
              E (NL) “integrates all your existing social services into an E•ID, which you can share with anyone in the real world”
              Happenr (BE) “a vertical search engine bringing a wealth of event calendar information at your fingertips”
              Soocial (NL) “a one address book solution to contact management”
              Siruna (BE) “online content automatically adapted to any mobile device”

  20:50 Networking with food and drinks & Time for you to Pitch
  23:00 End

  Join Pitch Arena on Facebook !

Every company will need to pitch itself from time to time. Usually we think of pitches in the context of raising money, but that is only one of many pitch situations. We pitch to potential partners, vendors, publishers, conferences, employees, and even lawyers.

Pitching is different from selling a product, because it is not part of our regular business practice, it is not something that relates to our core competence, and it tends not to happen in a repeatable and scalable way.

Thus pitching is not excluve for the start-ups on stage, also not only if you're raising money. Its more like saying "You pitch therefore you are". Thus get your pitch sorted out before you attend the meeting.

If this sounds very new to you, get some tips from the master guru and chief entrepreneur evangelist Guy Kawasaki via the following MP3 audio file