As Antti reported earlier we are closely following the Finnish companies that will be pitching to Israeli VCs at the IVA conference. Last Wednesday we had a chance to witness the final preparations of these companies for the event. Concilio Networks, Eniram, EpiCrystals, SenseG, and Whatamap did a dry-run of their pitches, which were then commented by seasoned professionals (incl. Jussi Harvela, Moaffak Ahmed, Pekka Roine).

Pitching is hard, if you want to do it properly. You have to keep your pitch length at eight minutes, you face a VC audience that sees thousands of pitches every year and you only have about ten to fifteen seconds to get everyone’s attentition. So what can you do? Here are some advice from the experts:

1) Focus, focus (never say “..and here’s a few more things you can do with our product”)

2) Reveal your value proposition first, then a concrete use case

3) Focus on a single benefit, provide ROI

4) Tell a story, but use a format (like news broadcasters do)

All the above-mentioned Finnish companies are in Israel at the moment. They will pitch on Wednesday, May the 21th and have many pre-scheduled meetings and events prior to that. We try to get a word from the field so keep an eye on our future coverage.

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