The five things we learnt from taking The Pitch online
The Pitch aims to give startup founders a kickass pitch and the platform to use it. Every year we run events around the country, working with hundreds of incredible entrepreneurs.
The day-long boot camps we run across the country include workshops, panels, pitching and networking drinks.
This year was different. Coronavirus hit at the start of the campaign and we had two months to move everything online.
The digital-only programme had over 500 entries and welcomed over 1,000 delegates to events. These events ranged from five-person workshops to 300-delegate pitching events.
It was an intense learning experience, so I thought it would be helpful to share what we learnt.
1. Build a bigger platform
Moving online created marketing opportunities that dramatically increased the reach of the campaign.
Founders normally pitch to 50 other entrepreneurs and a handful of investors at The Pitch boot camps. Taking the semi-finals online opened that up to a much bigger audience, helping us achieve our “why” of creating a platform for founders.
It also allowed us to run specialist semi-final events. Boot camps in different cities welcomed lots of different kinds of startups from the region. Online events focused on sectors like Food & Drink meaning we could have a more relevant audience and judges, and better quality feedback.
We decided to use video pitches to keep the energy levels up. That meant we could create a 2020 leaderboard, which provided a marketing asset and acts as a resource for our community.
The Pitch Final was broadcast via Zoom, but we also decided to stream live on YouTube. As a result, an extra 100 people tuned in. Have a think about what other platforms you can cast to and what that means for the delegate experience.
When it comes to the size of the events, it’s a win-win-win. We can build The Pitch’s reach, sponsors’ campaigns are more effective and the entrepreneurs get to tell more people about their businesses.
2. Networking and community building
The hardest thing to replicate online is the networking and community building you get from live events.
Startups take part in The Pitch boot camps in teams of 10-12. By the end of the day, they’ve built strong relationships and are cheering each other on during the pitching – before everything’s cemented with a celebratory drink.
My belief is that it’s impossible to completely replace the community building aspects of in-person events. However, here are a few things that worked for The Pitch and that other event organisers have shared:
Use breakout rooms
Communicate with participants in small groups
Give delegates a space to interact outside of the event
Leverage the networking functionality platforms have, eg. Hopin’s networking area
Look for opportunities to incorporate delegate interactions (more on that in a moment)
3. Get to know your technology
For the first five minutes of the Food & Drink boot camp, our judges couldn’t share their videos. We had done trial runs, of course, but shit happens.
The only way you really get to know the intricacies of platforms like Zoom is by using them regularly, so get to know your technology.
There’s no perfect online event platform either. We thought Hoppin was great but ticketing effectively through Eventbrite required a £10k-plus subscription (this might have changed). Zoom only lets one team member organise a particular webinar and isn’t as strong on branding.
Put together a detailed brief of what you need, speak to other event organisers and try stuff out.
When you’re set up, experiment. There’s a ton of features and plugins available to every platform and endless ways to organise events.
4. Make sessions as interactive as possible
It’s easy to get distracted or tune out when you’re watching events online. You need to work hard to keep your audience engaged.
Events shouldn’t feel like a one-way broadcast and regular audience interactions are an important part of making them engaging.
There are lots of ways to get people involved. Here are three suggestions to get you thinking:
Include a poll for each section of event content and share the results straight away
Take audience questions and feedback – and share it with everyone watching
Put people into breakout groups for short amounts of time
Think about the length of your event too. My ideal length is 90 minutes, which gives you time to cover a lot without losing anyone’s interest.
The Pitch Final was two hours and 15 minutes long; it is possible to pull off online events of this length, but you have to work hard at it.
Perhaps you could break a two-day event across a week or even a month?
5. Test, iterate, improve
My final piece of advice is to get practicing. You won’t build the perfect programme from scratch. We spent years improving our boot camp events – the 2019 programme had an average Net Promoter Score of 87.
You can see the impact of small improvements we made from the delegate feedback, which are shown in chronological order from left to right, below. These are public events, so it’s a slightly different approach to invite-only boot camp mentioned above.
It’s about learning, getting feedback and iterating. If you’re not running regular events, plan a few to test formats and learn. People are engaged and forgiving right now, so it’s a great time to figure out how to run events online.
Whatever you do, don’t just try to convert straight from offline to online. Experiment with the format and listen to your audience.
Want to find out more about The Pitch or get involved in our 2021 competition? Get in touch with the Inkwell team.
