Blog

Today was Mentor Day. Here’s a few snapshots of the day:

As the summer 2013 cohort got underway yesterday, the companies jumped right to work presenting their pitch to fellow participants, and of course, the FounderFuel team.

What is it that they say about being tougher on the ones you love? Well, as John Stokes and JS Cournoyer assured the companies, their criticism comes from the heart!

With these words began the first Show and Tell of the season. The participating companies went up to pitch in alphabetical order. Some of these companies are in very early stages, others have a million users; but they all got a hard, cold reality check and plenty of food for thought on how to improve their pitch.  

As teams embark on the adventure of FounderFuel, they will receive advice and opinions from many different people. It is up to the teams to exercise good judgment and be selective on which advice to follow, as John succinctly put it: “Don’t always do what we say”.

Over the course of the afternoon, John, JS and Ian provided on-point feedback and nuggets of wisdom. Here are a few choice investor quotes, from the heart:

“This is not exactly aspirational, exciting stuff”

“You just lowered the bar on what traction means”

“It [the message] is under a thick blanket of anecdote”

“I felt like you were preaching rather than selling”

“Too much whoosh not enough whack” [translation: too much wind not enough thunder]

“How much would that presentation cost you if you had to pay per word?”

“What is your end game?” / “I don’t know what you do”

Here are a few shots from the day:

Today marks the end of the first week of our Roadshow–man, what a trip! We kicked things off in Montreal on Monday with a great turnout and lots of great prospects, then headed to Halifax for a warm welcome and great conversations, then stopped in Ottawa and caught up with some alums and mentors (not to mention some great new faces!), and finally headed to Waterloo to meet with a few great startups. All in the space of a week!

We start it all again next week, with Quebec City on Monday, Drop-Ins on Tuesday, and Toronto on Wednesday. It’ll be great to see more alums, mentors, and the fresh faces of Summer 2013. We can’t wait!

Haven’t registered for next week’s Roadshow stops? You can still do so here. 

In the meantime, if you have questions or just feel like dropping us a line, feel free to do so at info@founderfuel.com.

Check out some photos from the week!

Check out some photos from Demo Day below! You can see the full set here. 

Thanks to Eva Blue for these awesome shots!

It’s hard to believe Demo Day was almost three weeks ago. Notman House is quiet with most of the teams having moved out, but the airwaves are still buzzing. To add to all the press the teams have received, Eva Blue recently posted the photos from Demo Day, and they turned out great! 

Check out the full set of photos here, or a few of them below.

Thanks again to Eva Blue for the great photos. 

Today the teams got together for their third and final Show and Tell. They gave us an update and then the first version of their Demo Day investor pitch. There was lots of constructive feedback and everyone realizes just how much they have to work on between now and Demo Day. Pitching is one of the biggest parts of this program with the culmination in their 8-minute pitch on May 23rd. Luckily the teams had the Real Ventures partners and some guest mentors to get them started on perfecting their pitches. Here are some photos and quotes from the day:

“Everyone needs to be thinking of their thing. Your ‘thang’.” – John Stokes

“I felt the diamond.” – JS Cournoyer

“I call it death by statistics. And then by overeducation.” – John Stokes

“You’re going to kill them. And they don’t even see it coming.” – Randy Smerik

“What are you leveraging to create success?” – John Stokes