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Ask HN: Feedback on startup pitch

2 points by adamzerner 13y ago

I'm not sure if this is appropriate to ask, but this is my first startup and my first time raising money, so I'd really like to refine my pitch. http://www.collegeanswerz.com/pitch I appreciate any and all thoughts!

jeffmould 13y ago
First, congratulations on making it this far, it sounds like you have done a lot of research and have a good idea. For the investor portion, I am not an investor so I can't say exactly what they are looking for in your category. From a personal perspective though I would greatly narrow down the pitch. In stead of focusing on the exact question asked by your competitors and you, I would focus more on how your questions are more focused and more informative to the student. You don't need to include the specific questions in the pitch. Show them in the demo, but don't go over them specifically in the pitch. Moving on the roadmap section, I would eliminate paying students to write reviews. While this works great initially and will get some base data for you, it absolutely does not scale well. If I were an investor this would be a potential flag to me. In addition, if I am paid to do a survey I tend to immediately have a favorable bias towards the results of that survey. An alternative may be to work with potential advertisers within the communities of each school. Say for example get a pizza shop to advertise 10% on the site if the student fills out the survey. You could probably also get the pizza shop to pay for advertising thus generating a source of revenue. Although this angle is a little harder, try working with alumni associations of various schools. Many of them have mailers and such and advertising to alumni could be a great way to get data. This brings up another point. I did not read all the questions on your survey so I could be off a little here. But in skimming the pitch and questions to me it came across as a rating system for which school has the better social life. While potentially great for prospective students, I don't think parents, or the schools for that matter, want students choosing them based entirely on social life outside of class. In particular I noticed questions regarding the physical aspects of male/female students. I would tend to stay away from them in the pitch. Not saying you have to remove them from the application, just don't highlight them when pitching or selling the app. Hope that helps and good luck.

2 points by adamzerner 13y ago

jeffmould 13y ago

First, congratulations on making it this far, it sounds like you have done a lot of research and have a good idea. For the investor portion, I am not an investor so I can't say exactly what they are looking for in your category. From a personal perspective though I would greatly narrow down the pitch. In stead of focusing on the exact question asked by your competitors and you, I would focus more on how your questions are more focused and more informative to the student. You don't need to include the specific questions in the pitch. Show them in the demo, but don't go over them specifically in the pitch. Moving on the roadmap section, I would eliminate paying students to write reviews. While this works great initially and will get some base data for you, it absolutely does not scale well. If I were an investor this would be a potential flag to me. In addition, if I am paid to do a survey I tend to immediately have a favorable bias towards the results of that survey. An alternative may be to work with potential advertisers within the communities of each school. Say for example get a pizza shop to advertise 10% on the site if the student fills out the survey. You could probably also get the pizza shop to pay for advertising thus generating a source of revenue. Although this angle is a little harder, try working with alumni associations of various schools. Many of them have mailers and such and advertising to alumni could be a great way to get data. This brings up another point. I did not read all the questions on your survey so I could be off a little here. But in skimming the pitch and questions to me it came across as a rating system for which school has the better social life. While potentially great for prospective students, I don't think parents, or the schools for that matter, want students choosing them based entirely on social life outside of class. In particular I noticed questions regarding the physical aspects of male/female students. I would tend to stay away from them in the pitch. Not saying you have to remove them from the application, just don't highlight them when pitching or selling the app. Hope that helps and good luck.