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Start-up pitch

New Spin-off initiatives, actively seeking (pre)seed venture funding that want to pitch their initiative to our network of investors, entrepreneurs and corporates are kindly invited to register with their TTO via the nomination form. The HIHR pitch event includes the scope of Therapeutics, Diagnostics, MedTech and Digital Health. Yearly deadlines for applications are set on March 31 and September 30 – we follow strict deadlines! Additional to your application we will schedule a short 10-minute MS Teams call to briefly discuss and correctly understand your nomination.

After the selection committee review, all applicants will be notified. Nominations not granted will be offered a Quickfire session and are welcome to apply again at a next edition. 

Please note that confidential information should NOT be shared on the nomination/registration form, in the summaries of the selection propositions, nor on the slides of the final pitch.

Pitch preperation

The quality of the pitches is of vital importance to HIHR. Only with well-prepared and well-trained pitches, addressing the required elements, we will be able to attract relevant investors for upcoming events. 

Selected pitch presenters are expected to prepare their pitch well and are required to follow our pitch training. 

The pitch training consists of the following parts:

  1. Pitching is selling. Your main goal is to attract attention and to win a face2face meeting with a VC. Do not merely present a technology but rather tell an appealing business story. Check out here the Pointers for creating a focused, effective investor pitch and practice!
  2. Webinar on ‘Resonating with investors‘, by Jeff Skinner, London Business School. Selected pitchers will receive an invite for this webinar and are expected to participate
  3. An online Pitch try-out training session several weeks before the pitch-event. A panel of experts, consisting of investors, corporates and KTO-experts will provide direct feedback on your pitch and share practical tips on effective presentation skills and increasing your chances of successful fundraising.

HIHR reserves the right to withdraw a project if it believes that the quality of the pitch is insufficiently guaranteed.

Planning HIHR-14

The pitch event

The pitch-sessions are formatted according the following guidelines:

  • All pitches will be offered 7 to 8 minutes with 5 minutes Q&A (depending on the total number of selected pitches).
  • We invite alumni projects, seeking additional funding in ‘pre-series A’-stage to apply once more. One project will be selected to present their case, including a 5 minute address to ‘lessons learned in their Start-up journey‘. 

How to follow up

Roel Bulthuis, former CEO of INKEF Capital, kindly shares his insights to follow up on your pitch:

‘When you present to investors at the HIHR event, it’s important to find the right way to follow-up in order to get the most out of your efforts. The investors that you will be presenting to (mostly Associates or Principles in their firm) are generally responsible for the handling of a significant amount of deal flow at any point in time. On a weekly basis, an associate might be looking at 10-20 files and needs to prioritize which of those to discuss in the fund’s deal flow meeting.

Now that deal flow comes from a variety of sources including the firms general funnel, opportunities that come in from other investors (higher priority to manage relationships and maybe a bit of FOMO) and opportunities that come from the firm’s partners (always the highest priority, they pay your salary). Every incoming deal needs to be processed and recorded and the decision to prioritize or not needs to be clearly justified. Now in between all that pressure, the associates attend events like HIHR where they see 5-10 presentations on a day. You have a short window there to make a first impression and more importantly, they also have a very short window to make a call. When they come back from the conference they have their own notes to go on plus their memory, so naturally they will likely only process the deals that really captured their attention.

So here’s the trick; make their life easy by sending them a thank you email after the presentation with:

  1. a short summary of your proposition and key takeaways from your presentation in max 10 lines,
  2. your non confidential presentation, and
  3. your offer to answer any questions or provide additional info at their request.

No need to be pushy, just a gentle way to follow-up and make sure your deal actually goes into the funnel.’

Submit your pitch

Are you actively seeking a venture capital investment? Apply for a pitch for the upcominging event.