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March 11, 2007
Peak Pitch and Gondola Jumping
My friend Om is hawking the idea of bringing west "Peak Pitch", an eastern VC thingie whereby entrepreneurs go skiing with VCs and have to make their pitch on the chair lift. The lengthier elevator pitch kinda idea may work on the bumps in New Hampshire where ski lifts are only a few minutes long, but it's a non-starter out here where you are regularly riding lifts for five and ten minutes, or longer.Matter of fact, the thought of being trapped past the one-minute mark in a Whistler gondola with some random entrepreneur in full pitch mode is frightening. It would have me, for one, mulling maximum gondola-exit jump heights -- and I'm hoping it would have same effect on any self-respecting startup CEO.
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Paul,
Peak Pitch actually worked out very well for both entrepreneurs and the VCs. Jesse Devitte from Borealis Ventures played match maker at the base of the mountain matching start-ups with potentially interested VCs.
Unknown startups were able to pitch 6 or 8 VCs (one on one) in a single day. In addition there was time at lunch and later in the day for follow on meetings.
BTW, the actual chair lift ride took 6 minutes, plus 5 minutes waiting in line, and another 5 minutes at the top of the mountain closing the conversation, so each startup got a solid 15 minutes of one on one time.
The skiing environment made it much more relaxed and fun. I would much rather be on a short chairlift ride with a known end point, than stuck in a conference room for the obligatory hour. Try it Paul, you might like it.
Don Dodge
Don Dodge
come on paul... if you can take the pitch... jump off the lift. seriously you endure me for more than ten minutes, i think you can chat with some entrepreneur who might end up making a lot of money for you.
Of course you were wondering about jumping.
The first thing EVERY VC thinks about when meeting a company is your exit strategy!
Seems like another silly idea. Why not scuba dive? prospective entrepreneurs can pitch by sign language...
True story: I grew up in St.Louis with two older brothers, and one of their best friends was, shall we say, fearlessly stupid (or stupidly fearless, or something).
Short version of the story is that that they were all out in Colorado for a summer trip in my brother's VM bug. They're driving around and notice a ski lift that is functioning (moving up the slopes). They want to get on it, and are told "no, it isn't open, we're just doing summer maintenance".
So they drove out and back and around and ended up *on the slopes* in the bug. They parked, got out and climbed up one of the towers. The only one brave|stupid|fearless enough to grab onto one of the cabs as it came by was their friend Mark Arman. He nearly fell while getting in, but he did get in. He rode it up to the next tower before unceremoniously getting out, hanging on the bottom, swinging out a few times & letting go. He landed rolling, and save a twisted ankle, he was fine.
He was laughing hysterically as they all ran back to the Bug and drove out of there, because by this time the maintenance crew, who must have seen the whole thing, arrived.
My brothers estimate he was 40 feet up. From the details I was able to piece together, I think this happened at Copper (they have no idea).
Sad epilogue to this story is that Mark Arman accidently killed himself while making a pipe bomb two years later.