02/03/2021
By Patricia Morena

Global Entrepreneurship Exchange (GE2) and IUCEE Webinar Series:

Startup Business Pitch Competition - What Makes a Winning Pitch

Thursday, Feb. 11 at 9 a.m. EST (7:30 p.m. IST, 2 p.m. GMT, )
Register online.

In her talk, Startup Business Pitch Competition - What Makes a Winning Pitch, Barbara Russell will discuss her extensive experience in judging a vast number of pitch competitions around the world, as well as coaching and teaching entrepreneurship, and will offer invaluable tips to inspire entrepreneurs in embracing the basics of how to create a killer PPT presentation and go on to WIN a pitch competition. Critical to this process is to understand what it is that pitch competition judges want to hear, and how do you appeal to their mindset, and to their expectations. AND, most importantly for the long-haul: acquiring these skills that will be essential in effectively communicating your offering to investors, customers, and the world at large! Part of this process is to review pitch deck examples, and some VERY FAMOUS ONES (LinkedIn, Uber, YouTube). Some are fantastic while others, (and surprisingly, some really successful ones at that) are downright awful! Reviewing these decks is eye-opening and creates a great learning pathway to determine what “good” means by acquiring the ability to identify the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Presenter:
Barbara Dalton Russell co-founded Cap W – an Advisory/Investment Banking firm focused on early/mid-stage tech-enabled companies, characterized by strong female and/or POC founders and teams, solving BIG problems with massive market opportunities. Cap W focuses on the AI/ML, VR/AR, ed-tech, clean-tech and fin-tech sectors to succeed through its model of investing and providing strategic advice that maximizes the ability of these companies to scale via targeted fundraising from optimal/inclusive strategic, venture, and other capital sources.
Russell serves on the board of several rapidly-scaling, early and mid-stage companies, providing advice fueled from her 28 years of experience on Wall Street in private equity, investment banking, M&A, and capital markets. She also serves on non-profit boards including: Alliance for Business Leadership (ABL)and NFTE, both of which represent her progressive views on diversity and inclusion. She coaches entrepreneurs at TechStars, LearnLaunch, MassChallenge, Harvard iLab, NFTE as well as the universities where she has taught entrepreneurship: MIT and Babson, on how to create a crisp, clear, well-reasoned pitch deck and then, how to effectively communicate that deck to the audience. Since the outbreak of COVID, she has been busy! In addition to continuing to invest and raise capital during this pandemic, she served as a judge in eleven pitch competitions (virtually, of course) since COVID began and looks forward to more.