How can we support the next generation of visionaries and their potentially world-changing ideas?
Building a successful business is an extremely difficult challenge. The odds are stacked heavily against young companies. The seemingly plentiful available resources can be hard to navigate at best, and out of reach at worst.
Irish founders, Scott Ashmore and Robert Halligan of PitchedIt, aim to tackle this issue via their community focused validation and fundraising platform launching next month.
PitchedIt, aims to help the next generation of startups
Last Friday we wrapped up our second Feedback Sprint ?. Here are some of the stats generated over a two week period!! pic.twitter.com/eoKEthOero
— PitchedIt (@PitchedItCo) August 15, 2022
Chances of success looking bleak for founders
The numbers are pretty bleak for entrepreneurs looking to start a business. With 90% of startups failing (https://bit.ly/3JChEoO) and less than 1% receiving investment capital (https://bit.ly/3BSIB5V) the dream to build a business of their own is off putting for many.
The PitchedIt platform enables early stage founders to dramatically accelerate their feedback loop in order to validate their ideas and raise much needed capital.
“The journey for an early stage startup is extremely difficult,” say’s Ashmore. “Most first-time founders don’t have a broad or diverse enough network to tap into, and capturing detailed and actionable feedback can be really tough.”
“We appreciate that venture capital firms, angel networks and even business accelerators can only service a small number of startups at any time and naturally, because of this, will only pick the most polished companies that fit their agenda,” says Halligan. “However, we’re betting that within the huge pool of startups that get turned down at this early stage, there are some incredibly talented founders with amazing ideas that just need some refinement, the benefit of time, or the right bit of advice from the right person to help them go from a “not interested” to “I want to invest.”
Community provides valuable feedback to improve business offering
Founders are often left with no feedback after being turned down for investment or by an accelerator and are sent back to navigate the choppy entrepreneurial waters without any guidance.
PitchedIt removes the usual barriers to entry and welcomes all tech founders. Once a member, they’re prompted to create their pitch using a standardised ‘pitch builder’. From here they can capture granular and actionable feedback from the PitchedIt community of vetted investors and mentors, or share it with their own network.
“It’s a private, secure and easy to use platform that replaces the need for multiple point-solutions often used by founders in the early stages. Plus our feedback mechanisms help founders refine and develop their offering and provide key data points on where they should focus their attention,” says Ashmore.
Breaking down barriers to raising capital
For founders who want to raise capital, the process differs from traditional avenues where the decision making power is held by a small private group. With PitchedIt, founders must earn the right to raise by having their business validated by the community of mentors and investors. Validation is done by scoring each startup out of 10 across 6 sections.
Founders must achieve a 7/10 or higher across each section to be deemed validated and the data provides further feedback. It’s a democratised peer-review system that aims to make the fundraising process fairer. Of course founders don’t have to raise capital with PitchedIt. The majority of the offering is geared toward developing a business, not raising money.
PitchedIt launching in September
PitchedIt is currently running concentrated feedback ‘sprint’s’ where five select startups get access to a group of over 30 mentors and investors for feedback and advice to help develop their businesses. The last sprint created over 600 pieces of individual feedback and resulted in rave reviews from the startups involved in the program.
Their official launch is happening in September and they will continue to run the sprints for the remainder of the year as a way to build on their offering and develop more features geared toward investors and mentors.
Halligan says, “We want to be a beacon for the startup ecosystem where tech entrepreneurs can use our platform to improve their chances of success. When you want to order takeaway you think of Deliveroo, when you need a taxi you think of Uber. Well, when you want to build a startup we want you to think of PitchedIt.”
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