▸ Early Days

Early in my career, I spent ~4 years working in technology investment banking in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. My time was spent working with founders/CEOs to help them prepare to do one of two things:

1. Sell their company to a larger tech company; or

2. Take their company public (Initial Public Offering or IPO).

In 2005, I moved to Baltimore, MD to work in private equity. Over time, I was invited to participate as a judge in various pitch competitions for incubators/accelerators and for workforce development programs.

What struck me was that the founders were smart, motivated, and working their tails off, but most were struggling in business pitch competitions. Therefore, they were also struggling to raise capital (small business loan, grant, or equity) in the real world.

▸ A SIMPLE GOAL

In 2014, I started teaching a live class in Baltimore to entrepreneurs who were part of one incubator/accelerator cohort.

My thinking was that if I could help just one of these founders learn how to communicate with investors and break through the fundraising barrier, that would do two things:

1. The founder would raise capital to start or grow their business.

2. It would help create new high-quality jobs in Baltimore City.

I’ve always enjoyed teaching, so I was excited about #1. However, the potential of #2 at the same time was what pushed me to start volunteering my time to develop and teach this class.

▸ Tearing My Hair OUt

Soon, I was invited to teach at other programs in Baltimore and the surrounding areas. The challenge was that the founders had different levels of experience and different types of companies:

• With different business models - most were small/traditional businesses and some were true startups.

• In need of different types of capital - some needed a workforce development grant, others needed a small business loan, and some needed to raise equity.

• At different stages - some were raising angel capital for the first time, others were at the seed stage, and a smaller group were trying to break through to their series A round and beyond.

Initially, I tried to create course materials for these different types of companies/situations. This didn’t work, especially since I was already stretching my time by volunteering to teach while working a full-time job in private equity, which required a lot of travel.

▸ Painting by Numbers

Since I barely had time to teach one curriculum, I wanted to make it work for as many founders as possible.

The ah-ha moment came when I reflected on my investment banking experience (helping take companies public or sell them) and on my private equity experience (investing in private companies). I realized there were commonalities of communicating with investors across all of these situations:

• The founders needed three types of business pitches - a summary to grab interest, one designed for email/print, and a third one specifically for an in-person presentation.

• Many of the concepts in those business pitches are the same for an angel round, an Initial Public Offering (IPO), and most situations in between (including small business loans and grants).

That is when I realized there was a Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) opportunity:

• First, I focused on a learning methodology to quickly and efficiently teach the fundamentals (~80%). I compare this to painting by numbers.

• Next, a coach/mentor could help the founder customize to their specific situation and get the rest of the way (~20%).

With some incredible volunteer mentors and coaches in Baltimore, we were able to help a lot of founders break through fundraising barriers.

The number was way beyond my expectations and my initial goal of helping one entrepreneur per year.

▸ surprise #1 - a Virtuous cycle

When founders raised growth capital, it helped create high-quality jobs (as I had hoped). However, something else happened, which was a wonderful surprise.

Each time a founder in Baltimore City raised capital for their business:

1) A new role model was created for other founders/entrepreneurs/CEOs.

2) Some of these founders became mentors to other entrepreneurs.

I get goosebumps when I think about this virtuous cycle because I didn’t anticipate it and it is one of the best parts of Pitch Creator’s origin story.

▸ Online course

After teaching live classes for 3-4 years, I developed a system that was efficient for teaching founders the fundamentals of fundraising (the painting by numbers concept above).

However, I was volunteering to teach at too many places, and it was no longer fun. I knew I had to create an online course to reach more founders and maintain my sanity.

Over the three-day weekend of Labor Day in 2017, I locked myself in my house and vowed not to come out until I had an online course. I knew nothing about developing online course curriculums, learning management systems, or any of the other technical aspects of an online course.

Nonetheless, I took the learning materials and system I developed while teaching the live classes for 3-4 years and created Pitch Creator’s first online course. I called it the “Foundation Course” because it focused on the fundamentals.

The first version was terrible! It had typos and even thinking back on it now makes me feel embarrassed. I got a lot of feedback on the first version and created the second (improved) version within three months.

Then, I created a new version of this online course (based on feedback) every ~6 months for the next two years. Through this process, the Pitch Creator Foundation Course got better and we have continued to make improvements.

▸ surprise #2 - College Students?

After I created the online Foundation Course, a local university entrepreneurship instructor asked me if he could try using it with his undergraduate entrepreneurial finance class because there was a business pitch (like Shark Tank) at the end of the semester class.

He explained that the business pitch was experiential learning for the students and got them more engaged in the class.

I agreed and gave him free online licenses for his students to use. However, I thought it was going to be a disaster because:

• These were students, who wouldn’t be motivated to do the work required.

• Most had zero business experience.

• They were going to pitch hypothetical businesses.

Could this situation have been any worse?

The surprise (which you probably figured out from the title of this paragraph) was that it worked!

• The university instructor collected the draft versions of the business pitches as homework during the semester and gave the students feedback on them.

• During their final business pitch event at the end of semester, the quality and consistency of the business pitches were dramatically improved.

Shortly thereafter, I created an online course specifically for college/university entrepreneurship instructors to prepare students for a business pitch event at the end of their semester class (or a school-wide event).

▸ fast forward to present

Pitch Creator is a team and through live classes/workshops and online courses/training, we have helped over 2,500 students/entrepreneurs.

We do this work for the testimonials, which are the fuel that drives us forward. When I am having a bad day, I go to our testimonials page, read about the transformations, and that always makes me feel better.

▸ social impact organization

Pitch Creator is a social impact organization and I volunteer my time. Inception to date we are roughly cash flow breakeven because we re-invest the cash flow that we generate to improve our online platform and work to help more students/entrepreneurs year.

Also, some of that cash flow is used for Hustle Awards for student entrepreneurs.

See our about page to learn more.