Artful Pitching

My partner, Graham, is a bit of a wonder. He’s been in “the biz” of telepresence for some time, starting as an inventor / artist and really being part of the core of how to connect remotely to someone else since the 80s. With my company, AquaCinema, too, he’s worked with some key-players in VR and 3D in the 80s and really got the fundamentals down. Add to this the kind of confidence and charism required to convincingly pitch ideas and you got someone that could sell you the world, starting with the piece of land under your feet.

everything starts smallSo, yesterday, during a meeting I noticed that he had trademarked something really small, let’s call it “product ant.” I didn’t see the relationship between “ant” and what we were building now. But then he explained the ecosystem, the relationship between our current product, product ant, and “where we were going.” And suddenly my vision opened up to see an integral picture of what was really a beautiful reality of what this business could become. I looked around the room and everyone had the kind of glistening in the eyes, that you have when you perceive something you want to believe in.

Every pitch is different and the last few days, you could get a big insight into how a company like AirBnB tried to pitch their business to a VC like Fred Wilson. Especially read the behind the scenes emails that Paul Graham shared. It was hard at that time to see the potential that AirBnB had. But the cereal stunt and the plan showed that these were entrepreneurs that could possibly* pull of that vision (*: remember that 9/10 startups still fail, so it takes a lot for ideas to come to fruition, but a strong team is a great start!).

These moments are rare but prove that without an open mind and some suspension of disbelief and cynicism, we won’t get to witness possibly great ideas being pitched and being realised.

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