Demo China 2018 — Pitch Preparation

Meeting Cyzone Beijing office gave us the chance to register Demo China in such a short period, within 2 weeks. The presentation of B made Cyzone believe that B’s level is suitable to do final pitch in Demo China. Therefore, we skip the original competition since June, we went to final competition directly, although thank for their kindness, at the same time feel that they just want to look more international, that’s the reason they are such tolerance to us.

This is our first time to attend Demo China. Before we go there, we liaise with Tracy from CY Zone for documentation, other than basic information of the company, we need to provide:
 — Financing history
 — Managing Board Member
 — Introduction to the project
 — Product and Services
 — Business Model (including major income structure)
 — Market Structure, strategy, and execution
 — industry rank and major competitor
 — major client and cooperation
 — project request (Financing amount, looking for resource & partner, media exposure)
 — financial statement and forecasting

The most difficult document is the presentation, Demo China have “6+3” roadshow restriction, which means you’re only allowed to speak 6 minutes on the stage, there is a big screen timer in front of the speaker, once speech time reaches 6 minutes, your presentation on the main screen will be cut-off. Then 3 minutes for the juries to ask you questions. I think this is the brilliant idea, it is similar to elevator speech, you must grab your chance to speak the most important part of your project, the investor time is precious, they are not patient enough to listen to all your story. For such a limited time frame, you need to be specific to speak what you really need to say to stand out from your peers.

Another thing is the company I brought is a blockchain company doing ICO now, due to the China government’s policy, we were not able to reveal any ICO or token sale on our presentation, therefore, it was difficult to explain the business model.

Another difficult document is the China visa, we need to bother Cyzone 3 times to issue us the invitation letter, due to strict China embassy, in the end, we apply in HK for our speaker.

Before the D-day, CY Zone is such considerable organizer, they arrange 2 different training day for the speaker to attend, one is in Beijing, another one is in Hangzhou. Training including
 — Legal consult regarding share allocation and financing
 — Speaking technique and rehearsal
 — Business Plan or deck one on one consulting.

If you really don’t have time to engage this one-day training, one day before the d-day, there is another quick training, they gather all the startup from the international session for 6 hours. There are 13 startup company in international session, I imagine all startup in international session is foreigner speaking English, but in the end only 2 companies are non-Chinese, others are Chinese studied or start their company in the USA, although they do speak English, but when they present their deck, they are speaking Chinese, due to most audience and jury are Chinese.

In BP Consulting, it is our first time to meet other startups, we introduce ourselves respectively. They are mostly Chinese from the USA, where they finish their study in the USA and start their company while they were students, their education and the working background is strong, ex. UCB, ex-google, MIT…etc

Cyzone investor director gave startup some advice:
 — 6 minutes is strict, screen will be cut off
 — holds great composure on stage is very important
 — if you solve the pain point of the current market?
 — competitor analysis
 — product introduction: make it clear, no need too details, let people interested
 — team introduction, which university founder graduate?
 — strength, weakness, background story, product development
 — it is not competition, no pressure

Regarding the jury’s question:
 — if too sensitive, it is ok to tell them we could talk about it after the demo show
 — don’t answer too stiff

She also helps us to modify our presentation. We need to demo to her our presentation directly from the computer. She gave us below advice:
 — don’t speak too fast
 — core team member is more important than your product: they said sometimes VC don’t really check your product, but if your team member worked in fortune 500 (ex. Google, Facebook), the VC will decide the investment faster, therefore you shall spend some time explaining how good core team member you got
 — straight to the point, using the number to explain your current and future market.
 — competitor compare: why we are better than our competitors? technical advantages, efficiency?
 — customer: who is our Enterprise customer? how many active users?
 — last slide: our contact, address, email, Facebook, telephone
 — How does the project work? short example 30 seconds

After modifying our presentation per suggestion, there is a chance for the speaker to be on stage and rehearsal the final presentation. It was in the main hall, whereas combine 3 different big TV screen. Each TV screen presents a different session, when we were talking, another stage is also talking, it was not easy to focus. The big countdown timer is in front of the speaker. Normally before the end of the pitch, you could show 30 seconds of the video.

After rehearsal, we were invited to a small hall for dinner, all the speakers are eating there, we were able to know each other more. When I watched others’ presentation, there is some startup already have many investors, which I don’t understand why they are here? They explain to me that they came to Demo China just for the PR.