#47 What most people get wrong about pitching Part 1
I love going to demo days and teaching pitch skills to entrepreneurs, and here is what a lot of people get wrong about the point of pitching.
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Whats in this edition:
🤑 Four top funding opportunities for social enterprises, BIPOC founders and creatives
🤑 What people get wrong about pitching - Part 1
🤑 Book a funding diagnostic call with me today
This Weeks Top Opportunities
In last week’s newsletter you loved this opportunity for Black and Brown female entrepreneurs from FundHerShip. So here it is again.
Accelerator Southwark Impact Growth Studio - Foundervine and Southwark Council are offering this excellent programme for social enterprises in Southwark. It’s full of workshops, mentoring and building valuable networks. Plus demo day could net you £25k. I’m excited to be a mentor on the programme too.
Grant Heritage Crafts Training bursaries - if you are looking to learn a new heritage craft or further your practise (with a view to building a business around said craft), these bursaries of up to £4,000 help people in financial hardship pay for their training.
Grant Haringey Unearthed (opens 1st June) - in celebration of Haringey being 2026’s Borough of culture, they are offering up to £40,000 to organisations and creatives looking to bring the Borough to life through creative & community led projects. (Also includes climate action & sustainability, health & wellbeing as well as Pride and Black History Month).
Accelerator F100 Programme - The F100 Growth Fund supports up to 15 high-potential, Black-led UK businesses through business workshops, financial modelling support, mentorship, wellbeing sessions, and a Demo Day at Sky HQ. Founders can receive up to £15,000 equity-free funding.
These Top Opportunities were lifted from the Funding Opportunities Database, a unique listing of over 80 grants, awards, accelerators and other funding opportunities for your small business (with a focus on creatives and social & environmental impact). Upgrade for just £4 a month and get Friday Funding Chats Live, and interviews with founders who have funded.
What most people get wrong about pitching
I love going to demo days and pitch events. Theres something incredibly invigorating and hopeful about watching a passionate entrepreneur pitch their solution that will change the world.
Can I tell you one thing I hate though - being pitched an idea I don’t really care about.
‘Hold on’ I hear you cry, thats not the founders fault. Their idea won’t be everyones favourite, they can’t make everyone in the room care. But thats where I think we get this wrong.
The best pitches are the ones that get me to care about something I didn’t care about before. Thats your job as a founder going into an investment meeting, or before a grant committee or on stage at a pitch event. You have to make people care about the problem you are solving. They don’t even have to like the solution you are selling, but they need to be on board with and agree that the problem needs solving.
Let me explain. A good business deeply understands the problem or pain point they are solving for their customer or community. The solution they offer to this problem may change over time, or due to circumstances beyond their control (like pandemics and illegal wars), but thats fine, because they are solely focused on solving the problem, whatever that problem looks like.
If I only care about your solution, because it looks cute, or does something interesting, then I’m only onboard as far as that solution is viable. If I care about the problem however, I’m in it for the long run.
So the thing that most people get wrong about pitching is that they think they are there to tell a story or sell a solution. They aren’t. They are there to make the people in the room care as deeply about solving the problem as they are. So deeply that they will give you a grant, invest or give you an award or other form of support to help you get there.
I’ll give you an example, I was recently at the London College of Fashion MA in Fashion Entrepreneurship & Innovation Demo Day. A showcase and pitch event for students in front of a room full of their teaching team, students and members of the sustainable fashion enterprise community. The winning pitch was UnderRated Mag and I’ll be honest, when she first introduced her alternative fashion magazine I rolled my eyes. As someone who has worked in fashion media, I now find fashion magazines a bit tedious. However, as her pitch continued, she opened my eyes to the deficit of South Asian creatives and designers in the fashion industry, and how said industry was worth billions. Western fashion benefited from South Asian culture and craft (not to mention the raw materials they supply) but rarely gives space to it’s talented creatives.
UnderRated Mag will spotlight global talent, building pipelines to enable discovery and talent acquisition. She spoke so passionately as a South Asian woman with first hand experience of the problem of diversity in the industry. By the time she had finished, I was totally convinced that this was a massive problem that, if solved correctly, would unlock opportunity and talent in a big way.
After the pitching, I was chatting with one of the judges and mentioned how impressed I was that she made me care about the problem. She agreed with me that it made a great pitch and definitely marked her entry out from the others*.
So now you’re wondering how you can make your pitch better, how you can get people to care. In next week’s edition, I’ll be sharing some practical tips to action for your next pitch. Stay tuned.
*The quality of the three pitches was so high and I was glad I wasn’t judging that one as I would have found it very hard to choose a winner. I want to give a special mention to Loopify and Dina Maher, two excellent businesses that I hope go on to find the investment that they need.
Funding Diagnostics Call
Do you read these emails and think ‘I don’t know where to start’? Or maybe you have started but find yourself stuck and in need of a fresh perspective in how your business makes money? I am now offering Funding Diagnostic Calls for small & micro business founder in need of a collaborate way to diagnose a new funding strategy.
We’ll explore your goals, process, challenges, and successes. I’ll as you focused questions to ensure we build a complete picture of your specific needs, helping you move past any roadblocks.
What to Expect:
You will leave the 50-minute call with:
A fresh perspective on your funding process, helping you to see it differently.
New possibilities and open doors for funding applications.
Clarity on a potential next step, including the option for a follow-up session to ensure you stay accountable and action your points.
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