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The Pitchfork Program Guide THE PITCHFORK PROGRAM GUIDE TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 | Introduction: Background and Purpose 4 | What Goals Do You Want to Accomplish? 5 | PitchFork Challenge: Planning and Preparation 5 | The Basics: Who, What, Where 5 | Summary Timeline 6 | Signing Up Participants 6 | Everything Begins With the Pitch Criteria 7 | The Application 7 | Selection Committee and Judges 8 | Recruit One More Person: An Emcee 9 | PitchFork Challenge: Logistics, Staging, and Content Each Step of the Way 9 | From Applicant to Participant 9 | Round 1 of the Challenge 10 | The Semi-Final Round 12 | Preparing for the Finale 12 | The PitchFork Challenge Finale 14 | Final Thoughts: Communication, Coaching, and Marketing 14 | PitchFork Event (Coming Soon!) 15 | Appendices 1 PitchFork Program Guide© 2020 | Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship | www.HannahGrimes.com influencers, mentors, and INTRODUCTION resources in the community. PitchFork is an application-based The PitchFork program for Challenge© seeks to do entrepreneurs to: much the same, but is 1. Learn how to pitch structured as a their business. “competition” with judges who award a cash 2. Present their prize to the winning business opportunity business pitch. to investors, service providers, potential customers, and THE PURPOSE OF PITCHFORK the community. PitchFork works to encourage local Access to capital has long been business starts and local business recognized as a major challenge for growth — businesses that employ startups and small businesses. In rural people locally and whose owners want to America, a lack of capital has been build a life and a community as well as a identified as one of the main reasons for profitable business. the steep decline in startup rates, particularly since the great recession of PitchFork facilitates local investment — 2008. equity, loans, and grants — and local economic growth. Local investment Numerous pitch programs exist, but offers your community greater control to nearly all are urban-based, technology- shape your local economy. focused, and concentrate on startups expected to generate big ROIs by going Local investing decisions can target the public or selling to another company with start and growth of businesses that deep-pockets. Most also have a win- reflect the values and the culture of the lose, Shark Tank mentality, with little individuals and institutions in your support, guidance, or coaching for pitch region. Relationships between participants. entrepreneurs and investors strengthen the fabric of your local economy by The Hannah Grimes Center for connecting leaders in your community Entrepreneurship, in Keene, NH, with entrepreneurs in a meaningful way launched PitchFork in 2016. The program to build valuable networks, provide vital has evolved into two offerings. support, and increase the chances that local ventures will survive and thrive. The PitchFork Event© strengthens pitch skills in entrepreneurs and builds PitchFork is intentionally encouraging connections with various “investors” in and supportive. In addition to providing the community — banks, venture angels, access to capital, PitchFork offers regional development corporations, access to pitch guidance, practice, and potential customers, community coaching for participants. Everyone who 2 PitchFork Program Guide© 2020 | Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship | www.HannahGrimes.com participates in a PitchFork should feel monetized in any way; and 2) that you that they have gained invaluable insight seek our written permission in advance. about their business, how to talk about their business, and what they need to do Importantly, the guide is exactly that, a to make it a success. guide — not a rigid formula. Any element of our strategies, processes, steps, and PitchFork also provides important staging can (and should!) be adapted for opportunities for exposure, visibility, and the unique economic, social, and cultural networking — opportunities often lacking characteristics in your community. And, in rural areas. you’ll find that circumstances change over time, so your PitchFork should Critically, PitchFork is intended to be fun, evolve too. In fact, close examination of energizing, and festive! It’s a way to bring some of the samples in the Appendices the community together to support, will reveal that we’ve done PitchFork with encourage, and applaud our small town fewer than our recommended five judges businesses — not just bankers, or and more than our recommended four economic development professionals, pitch finalists! but friends, family, and neighbors. Finally, there is a lot of detail in this THE PURPOSE OF THIS GUIDE guide. Important nuances that we have learned over time. That said, we suggest A lot of has been learned since we that you resist the urge to dive in launched PitchFork in 2016, from immediately and begin implementation application processes and judging — read the guide through, cover to criteria to pitch presentation coaching cover, to get a general sense of and event logistics. everything first. Then go back and work through details and specifics. Our approach to PitchFork is certainly not perfect. Every time we run it, we While much of the preparation, guidance, learn something new. However, we think coaching, and event logistics are the we have a winning “recipe” with a proven same for the PitchFork Challenge and track record, and that it is worth sharing the PitchFork Event, we think it’s helpful with others. to address each PitchFork option separately, step-by-step. This program guide is intended to help Let’s begin! you create your own PitchFork Event or Challenge without having to reinvent the wheel. Everything you need to design and run PitchFork in your community is included. If it helps you, please feel free to use the PitchFork name and logo. Our only requirements are, 1) the event will be a community-oriented, “not-for-profit” event. We don’t want PitchFork to be 3 PitchFork Program Guide© 2020 | Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship | www.HannahGrimes.com WHAT GOALS DO YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH? Community Benefit is an important goal of PitchFork Before you decide to run a PitchFork Challenge or a PitchFork Event, what is When we started PitchFork, community your “why?” Consider this essential benefit was not an explicit benchmark. strategic question first. However, we soon discovered that people wanted to better understand Do you wish to stimulate startup activity? PitchFork’s “bigger picture” — Help grow existing businesses? Create particularly our judges. We saw that there more jobs in your area? Foster a needed to be a broader lens: something particular industry? Is your “area” your more than profit projections and job town? County? Region? growth. After further consideration, community benefit was added to our Your answers will help you build a judging criteria — what assets would the PitchFork that is aligned with your big- business bring to the community? How picture goals — from the application would their strengths make the questions to the judging criteria to the community stronger? How would they audience you invite. engage in, and be part of, the community? Starting with the end in mind is a great way to plan the entire PitchFork We now appreciate that that community Challenge or PitchFork Event. benefit is an important criteria that helps distinguish PitchFork from other pitch For example, at Hannah Grimes, we contests. decided that we wanted to encourage startup ecosystems and networking in a With these strategic questions answered broader rural region. States in New and your goals clarified, you are now England are small, so we opened the ready to plan and implement your application process to rural areas in PitchFork Challenge or PitchFork Event. southwestern New Hampshire, southeast Vermont, and north-central Massachusetts, around where the state lines come together. We also wanted to support new business ideas and have learned that mixing new idea presentations with presentations of existing businesses — even recent startups — at a PitchFork does not work well. So, in our PitchFork Challenge, we created two prize tracks — one exclusively for new business ideas and the other for startup businesses looking for capital to fund growth. 4 PitchFork Program Guide© 2020 | Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship | www.HannahGrimes.com PITCHFORK CHALLENGE: PLANNING & PREPARATION operating for three years or less and help Picture it, PitchFork Challenge day has them fund growth (ultimately, this criteria arrived! The room is packed. Business is up to you!). pitches have been fine tuned, practiced, and are ready to go. Entrepreneurs apply to participate and, if selected, enter into two rounds of Two finalists in the Business Idea track elimination, resulting in two Idea track make 2 minute presentations, followed finalists and four Rural Startup Business by 2 minutes of questions from the five finalists. The finalists make a final judges. Then, four finalists in the Rural presentation at a festive public event. An Startup Business track make 5 minute emcee presides over the final, public presentations, followed by 6 minutes of Challenge event. questions from the judges. A panel of five judges is recruited and The judges confer, and winners are trained. They ask questions, rate the announced. $1,000 for the Business Idea pitches, confer, and decide who wins the track winner and $10,000 for the Rural cash prizes. The cash prizes are used by Startup Business track winner! the winners to move their business The Challenge has been a huge success. forward and are substantial enough to Numerous entrepreneurs have applied make a meaningful difference in the and participated. The community has development of their business. been engaged and supportive. There’s PITCHFORK CHALLENGE SUMMARY been lots of great networking and TIMELINE awareness building. So many lessons have been learned by all the participants From start to finish, activities are laid out that everyone thinks of themselves as a over approximately a six month period. winner for having gone through the Of course, much of the goals-based process. strategic thinking will have been Let’s break things down and explore how percolating during the prior months and we got here.
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