Mentoring Entrepreneurs at the Clean Business Investment Summit

Today won’t be a particularly light one for me, but it most certainly will be fulfilling.

As I’ve mentioned, for many years I’ve sat on the advisory board for the Clean Business Investment Summit, an annual event in early September during which a vetted set of cleantech entrepreneurs (not unlike ours here at 2GreenEnergy) come face-to-face with a whole slew of angel investors and VCs.

Though today is a sort of preliminary event, somehow it’s even more rewarding than the final. Starting at 8 AM sharp and running right through to close to 6 PM, I’ll be listening to cleantech businesspeople give my team and me their pitches so we can help them refine their presentations.

The key is connecting to one’s audience immediately. Nothing wild, melodramatic, ultra-personal, or esoteric: just a couple of staccato sentences that lay out clearly the proposal to fulfill some unmet need.

In all fairness, this isn’t anywhere near as easy as it sounds. For instance, some people take the first minute (of the eight they’re provided) to tell us that humankind needs clean energy and that fossil fuels present an environmental hazard, or that agribusinesses are serving us food that is essentially devoid of nutritional content. But guess what: anyone who’s getting Bs or Cs in junior high school already knows that.  So the question becomes: How do you frame the unmet need in a way that grabs the attention of an audience that is sufficiently intelligent and sophisticated that they happen to have a few million dollars that will motivate them to, if they are impressed, invest in your company?

I look forward to this mentoring session every year.

More when I return.