Your Pitch Sucks.

Drawing some inspiration from the You Suck at Photoshop series as well as the 3 pitches that I saw yesterday, I've decided that most presenters need some tough love. Here's why potential investors and advisors think you suck:

1. You start weak. You haven't rehearsed your opening line. Instead, you're nervous, try to be witty, and make a remark about the weather. Then, you make some impromptu introduction about yourself that is boring as hell. I'm already rolling my eyes and reaching for my Blackberry.


2. You ask a stupid question. Your audience is there to judge you, not to interact with you. So when you ask "do you ever have [problem x]?", you'll get a room of blank stares and head shaking.


3. You spent 5 minutes explaining why your team of unknown managers and coders from unimpressive organization is "world class".


4. Your PowerPoint was designed by a coder. 'nuff said.


5. You read every slide, word for word. And on top of that, you stuttered.


6. You don't know jack. You present the revenue projections and the valuations, but none of the numbers add up and you fumble the explanation. On top of that, your company is pre-revenue and you're looking for a huge valuation.


7. You sucked the life out of the room. Your nerves and the lack of rehearsals are catching up to you. When you tell us that you have the skills to sell hundreds of millions of dollars of products in a competitive market to Fortune 50 companies, we simply cannot believe you.


8. You think I suck because I don't love your business. Reality is, investors look at hundreds of businesses before they invest in one. Lose the attitude and up your game.

The solution is simple, really. You need the audience to fall in love with you in the first 30 seconds, so come out of the gates strong. Then, keep their interest for the next 9.5 minutes. If you're a person that's not comfortable in front of crowds, you need to practice 10x more than the other guy. Get a video camera and record yourself. Go to Demo.com and check out the best pitches, as well as the worst ones, and learn from both. Draw inspiration from Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki. Test the pitch in front of your friends and family instead of a group of people that might give you big money.

Just in case you think I'm the only that thinks your pitch sucks, I'm not - I've checked with the other guys in the room. So what are you waiting for? Fix your pitch!

Tripit.com: The Killer App For Travellers

I started planning a month-long family vacation this week, and like everything else I do these days, I started my research by looking at review sites on the net. In my opinion, Tripadvisor.com is still the best for reviews on just about anything travel related. I also like WestJet, Hertz and Expedia. But where's the glue that puts all of this stuff together? Up until now, I've resorted to entering the details of travel bookings into my calendar manually.

Tripit.com will change your life even if you travel just a bit. Here's how it works:

1. You email your confirmation emails from travel sites such as Expedia, Hertz and WestJet to plans@tripit.com. (it reads everything from flight confirmations to restaurant reservations)


2. Login to tripit.com, and make sure that the details were entered correctly.

It's just that simple. Tripit creates an itinerary, starting from the date of your outbound flight and ending on the date of your inbound flight. In-between, it adds your hotel reservations. (no more manual entries!!) Then, it automatically adds a Google Map detailing how to get from the airport to the hotel. You can also add other events, meetings and links manually.

Then, it feeds the information back to you in a slick web 2.0 interface, but more importantly, it publishes an iCal feed that you can plug back into your calendar. It also has a very cool mobile feature, where you can email commands such as "get schedule" or "get flight" and it will email the details back to you - no more digging for buried confirmation emails!

I love how much work the Tripit team has done to keep things simple. For instance, there's no sign-up page on website. You simply sign up by emailing a confirmation to Tripit.

There's a few things that I would like to see added to the feature set, but they're relatively small nits. The application is currently free to all users, and that's great for consumers - sometimes, you do get more than what you pay for. Tripit raised $5.1 million in April, and it will be interesting to see how they develop their revenue model. I, for one, hope they've already figured it out and stick around for a long, long time.

BarCamp Calgary 2: June 14 @ MRC

Mount Royal College will be hosting Calgary's 2nd BarCamp on Saturday, June 14th, from 10:30 to 3:30 - details here. This time, we're focusing on bringing the community together for some beer, lunch and snacks in a casual environment. We'll have breakout rooms, plenty of couches, and will even have Rock Band set up! (You better bring your A-game, I hear Sarah's been practicing hard).

As for the attendees, we're extended invitations to the various groups around town, and asked them to bring some people out - gaming and UX in particular, but all are invited. It's our hope that Calgary's most interesting entrepreneurs and technology experts will use BarCamp as the ultimate place to mingle.

We're also inviting some pretty interesting experts out, and think that they will make some pretty interesting presentations. But no matter - isn't the lobby the coolest place to hang out anyways?

Shopping for a PC at Best Buy or Future Shop: Now Even More Painful Than Using Windows.

I recently started working on a project which requires some doodling, so after much consternation, I decided to buy a Tablet PC. While my Mac would continue to serve as my primary machine, I needed a cheap and cheerful digital sketchbook.

I decided to drop into the local Best Buy, and asked to try out their only Tablet PC, the HP TX2000 series laptop. Pretty good machine for the price - around $1,000 - all I needed to know was whether the digitizer was pressure sensitive (press harder with the pen, and get a thicker/darker line). I had done some preliminary research on the web, but there were conflicting reports on this aspect of the machine.

There were a lot of sales reps standing around the computer department, not really doing much of anything, except socializing with each other. I asked one of them if I could get the digitizing pen for the tablet. He rolled his eyes and told me to use my finger. When I insisted, he dug up the pen and stood behind me, watching my every move as I stumbled around the Vista interface, checking to see whether the tablet was indeed pressure sensitive. He was frustrated that I pulled him away from chat time with the other reps, having to make sure I didn't steal the pen. So, when I couldn't figure it out and asked him, he just said "I don't know". I gave him back the pen, and his spirits immediately lifted. He hurriedly put the put back under lock-up. Then, he asked "so you're going to buy one, right?" Yea, right. And just in case you're thinking that this was some pimply-faced 16 year old, it wasn't. He was the "supervisor" of the computer department.

I was actually thinking of just buying it, taking it home, and figuring out it later. After all, these places carry price and satisfaction guarantees, right? However, the experience was so painful, I decided against that.

I left the store empty handed. Over the weekend, I spent a few hours doing some research on the tablet. Finally, after sifting through many pages of disinformation, I found my answer. (it is pressure sensitive, to 256 levels, btw). Now I'm ready to pounce.

Staples carries the HP tx2110ca for $1,004.96, but doesn't carry it at the store closest to my house. I called Future Shop (which was acquired by Best Buy in 2001) to see if they would match the price. After all, these guys have "Get it for less. Guaranteed" as a trademark. They carry an identical machine with a different model number: the HP tx2104ca - for $1,099.99 - a difference of about $95.


I asked nicely if they would match the price, given that it was pretty much the same machine. Maybe they wanted my business, I figured. Not only did they refuse, but they were actually quite rude about it - as if I was trying to pull a scam on them. After my experience at Best Buy, I don't know why I was expecting anything different.

So, back to the Staples website. 2 minutes after I got off the phone with Future Shop, I was the proud owner of a HP tx2110ca, saving myself any further frustrations of having to deal with either Best Buy or Future Shop employees. In the process, I also saved myself $95 plus taxes, and a bunch of gas money, since Staples ships for free.

Just in case you think I'm going off the deep end with consumer advocacy talk, think again. I'm just saying: buyer beware. Future Shop and Best Buy pour hundreds of millions of dollars into marketing and advertising, and recovers it by selling products for profit. To maintain higher margins, they hire marginal staff, and sell overpriced cables and warranties. This is old news.

Best Buy/Future Shop aren't the only companies with questionable practices. Companies like HP help support the deceptive marketing practices of Best Buy/Future Shop, by creating exclusive model numbers for each retailer. You can buy the exact same HP tx2000 series computers at a variety of retailers, however, you will never find Future Shop's tx2104ca at any other retailer. Thus, Future Shop will never have to price match on that unit. They win the argument in the fine print. Unfair? Yes. The only thing you can do about it? Your homework.

To close: a homework assignment. Try to figure out why HP has so many model numbers for such similar computers. link