Boo hoo — we lost our first startup competition

Earlier this week, we were excited to make our first public presentation about TeachStreet to a large room of people (150+). A few weeks ago, we applied for the TiE Funding Forum 2007, to be one of the six startups who got a chance to give a 5-minute presentation to a room full of people, and to be judged by a panel of Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors — we were excited to be chosen at all! We admit that we had high hopes of bringing home first prize (a few thousand dollars), and likely being flooded with investors carrying arms full of cash… alas, it didn’t turn out as originally planned.

All kidding aside, though, the event was fantastic. The presentation was met with a ton of enthusiasm, and afterward we were excited by the “flood” of people coming up to tell us how much they liked our idea. In addition, we made a number of new connections with local VCs and Angel investors — that was especially important, because to date, we really haven’t opened up much beyond our private Angel/investor contacts. In addition, we’ve been able to solicit a number of tactical suggestions on things to add to our presentation deck, questions we should be prepared for, etc. All in all, we know that this event was a big learning experience for us — getting that first public pitch out of the way is a big load off. Finally, the event secured for us our first print newspaper mention, and a great blog inclusion by the Seattle Times Brier Dudley — our own little humble beginnings!

Of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without highlighting the foes who vanquished little ol’ TeachStreet — first prize went to mortgage company revenue maximizer, Protelus and second prize went to Springstar, a company developing non-toxic pest control products (both were pretty cool, although we’re quite sure there were steroids involved… we’re having the commissioner investigate)

For those who are interested, I’ve embedded the presentation below — of course, it’s sans-audio/explanation/pitch, and thus may be a bit dry (there are very few words on the slides — I went for more of a Seth Godin / Guy Kawasaki visual pitch). But, you should be able to follow the flow — if you have any questions, fire us an mail or leave a blog comment — and, if you’re a competitor, stop reading now!

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