What it takes to move forward in any of these tricky ventures is perseverance. And a mom who drives you to all of these lessons as you complain in the back seat, only to thank her for her patience and sacrifice years later. What Mom does is to give you structure. She guarantees that every Wednesday, from 3-4, you'll have to sit in Mrs. Welsher's living room, banging on piano keys. She also gives a benchmark for progress, because when she compliments your C scale 8 weeks after you first started practicing, she really means it.
Unfortunately, when working on a start up, Mom isn't around. Not only is she not there to help, but her reminders about her friend Marge's kid getting a cushy job at BlackRock ($80,000 salary and full benefits), or Cousin Tommy starting his second year of medical school don't really help inspire much of a self-confidence. What we really needed to give us structure and mark our progress was a competition. And we got that, in the form of the Carolina Challenge.
This annual competition receives a hundred applications a year for its cumulative $50,000 in prize money. Entrepreneurs from around the state of North Carolina, and at all levels of their venture from idea to cash flow positive, compete in a series of pitches to prove to judges, themselves, and their mothers that their idea is validated and their work worth it.
As this was my second time competing in the Challenge, my first coming two years past in a disappointing ending in the semi final round, I had some insight into what the judges did and did not want. ((My first idea was for a drinking glass that lit up when any common "date rape drug" was dropped into a drink was stolen by students out of NC State and raised 100K, by the way. Clearly, I'm totally over it.) May and I worked hard to produce certain results that I knew the judges looked for.
The first round, however, was just a two minute pitch without any slides, and one minute for questions. I love this stuff. Pitching is exhilarating to me. You have an idea, or a strategy, or a concept, or a whatever that you worked really hard on and believe in. You've spent countless hours researching, preparing, and structuring your pitch. You've got a cute opening line that you're proud of and- my favorite part- a zinger to close on. And now, you've got X minutes of silence for a couple (4 in this case) of very accomplished men and women to listen in on your idea. Its show time.
This part of the pitch went spectacularly. I give them the spiel about the problems in delivery. No competitor is serving the market correctly, because they are all using a business model developed in the 90s. To be clear, that's the 1990s. Restaurants are unhappy, and are begging for a change. We've done 20 interviews and have 5 committed restaurants and we are the right people to make this company happen.
"Morph. May we take your order?" I conclude, whipping out a fancy black napkin from my back pocket and flourishing it over my left forearm with a deep, waiter-esque bow.
The judges came at me with a few questions about scalability, pricing, and the market, all of which we were overly prepared for. 3 minutes after I started, I was out the door, overflowing with confidence. And rightfully so, as a few days later, we get the email confirming that we moved on to the second round.
Now we have a 5 minutes presentation, 4 minutes of questioning, and some serious competition. We get to work on preparing a slideshow of everything we might need (typical business, and not something I've ever enjoyed or been particularly good at). This is where the Challenge provided us the structure we needed. We knew that we needed to show our pro forma financials. The judges would expect a market size (as I learned from the Pitch Party), an explanation of the idea, a competitive landscape, and a few other things. These expectations were the same (in a parallel discipline) as Mrs. Welsher's when she was teaching me piano a decade ago. Learn the major scales, then the minor scales, then show that you can play this song. These requirements gave us something to work towards, and dammit we worked hard.
The day of the second round came, and we couldn't be more ready. Our deck was beautiful (thank you, May) our pitch practiced and perfected to the point of seeming impromptu (the pinnacle performance goal of a good pitch), and our appendix slides so extensive that we couldn't imagine a single question that we wouldn't be able to answer with prepared statistics and well thought out reasoning.
As we were scheduled towards the end of the order, we got to watch almost all of our competition pitch before it was our turn. Waterless Buddy's was in our room and, as usual, crushed it. A few others went up with huge ideas and little execution or lots of execution on a little idea. It seemed like we had a niche right in between where our very scalable idea and our wonderfully designed, very explanatory wireframes and progress with customers would help propel us into the finals. If we felt good before the pitch, then damn did we feel amazing afterwards.
We did our 5 minutes so perfectly, the judges seemed like they weren't sure what to ask! One came at us with a question about keeping drivers on the road, and we answered with a bucket of data about student employment, and a fully developed strategy about incentive structures. Then silence. Another judge asked about the restaurants we had committed. An easy question, and a superb way to prove our past work and success. Then silence. The third had nothing to ask, even when prodded. And this comes after every team- even the best ones- were absolutely drilled on their business models, financials, or some other part of their pitch.
May and I felt so good, we high fived before even retaking our seats.
Unfortunately, we must have been missing something. Later that week, we get an email notifying us that we placed in the Top 10, but will not be competing in the finals. 'Disappointed' wouldn't get close to describing how I felt. All of our work, all of our confidence, popped like a balloon. Sure, we placed. But to not even pitch in the finals? Who could have possible beat us? Was their something about us, the founders, that the judges didn't like? Where did we fall short?
When the day of the finals came, we were invited to hear the other pitches, and receive our checks. Lisa Li, my GLOBE entrepreneurship buddy and cofounder of the amazing idea that will soon become Open Oceans, delivered a remarkable pitch that earned her first place in the entire Challenge.
But as May and I sat and watched the teams that had beat us out, I needed every bit of encouragement from May to keep me happy. We were better than those guys, I told myself. We worked harder, or our idea was better, or our pitch style was loads better then the people up on stage right now.
What I learned is- it doesn't matter. Its all a game, and the best players are not the ones that win the first time they play, or even those that win the most. The best ones are those who find the fortitude to roll the dice again, no matter the past results.
Sure, I was disappointed we weren't higher ranked. And it definitely took some of the confidence out of me, and forced me to question my abilities, the idea, and my own willingness to continue. But that feeling of self-pity was short lived. We won $1000! And 7th place in this huge competition. We did well. Now, lets see if we can do great.
After the Challenge ended, it became time to get serious. I had committed to Morph as my full time career. This was my baby, and my future, and it was going to die as a $1000 Happy Gilmore check unless I started pushing. The next step surrounded technology. It was time to start building. Next time, on Orange is the New Morph.
Much love,
A
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