Early Stage Investor Pitching

BACKGROUND

Every year at UPPSTART we hold an invite only event aimed at helping entrepreneurs and startups raising early stage investment capital to gain the attention of investors in the tech startup space.

After 7+ years of doing this, we have had many startups raise funding as a direct result, and every year at UPPSTART many startups attend specifically for this event.

Perhaps obviously due to the nature of the event we get a lot of people asking to take part, so here are a few pointers on who we put through.

CRITERIA

To apply as a startup pitching at this event you need to:

– Be an actual startup. There are many definitions on this, ours is that you should be something something disruptive/innovative and have aggressive growth plans. Though consultancies/agencies are very welcome to attend UPPSTART, they are not included in our startup definition for this session.

– Be early stage. Often this is an early idea (ideally one that has been validated with early proof of concepts/prototypes) or a business that started but is still looking for its product-market fit. If you are at a later stage you should consider our ScaleUp Stage Investor Pitching session instead.

– Be in tech. UPPSTART is a conference with the overall theme of technology startups so we normally always look for a strong tech angle within your business/idea for this session.

– Be awesome! OK so lets break this down. We hand pick all companies on this event with limited places and we look for similar things to what investors will be more likely to invest in to make this productive for everyone involved. For example the founder(s) and core team having a strong background and passion for the problem they are solving, a solution to the problem they are solving  which looks commercially viable (and viable to scale), as well as how far along the product is. This is an early stage pitch, so you don’t need to have a fully scaled business or even customers, but some proof that you have built an MVP/prototype and have interest from the customers you are planning to serve will go a long way.

HOW TO APPLY?

For this session you apply when you register a ticket, telling us that you are an entrepreneur or pat of a startup and with to meet with investors. You can sign up for our free virtual conference here. If for some reason you signed up but werent prompted about this, contact us and we will gladly look into it for you.

If you are selected we will email you all the next steps along with what to prepare.

I DIDNT GET IN, WHAT NOW?

If you didn’t make it through this year, we’re sorry but since we have such a large number of applications for this and only limited time with the investors present on the day we only have a limited number of places to give away. Often we have to turn down really great startups for this every year so please don’t assume we don’t think you have a good business/idea.

You can still get some great results from attending UPPSTART this year and if it’s investors you are looking for specifically, we suggest the following things you can still do (for free!):

– Attend the event and pay attention to all the Early Stage content on our agenda. VC’s will be on stage whom you can chat in our session chat and ask questions so its a good way to build investor relationships. Again, its free, and we’ll have hundreds of investors taking part in our full programme, so it’s kindof a no-brainer!

– Attend our open matchmaking events throughout the day (see agenda for those). You can be paired with investors, or those with investor networks who might be able to make you introductions.