Elevator Pitch Session

• Proof of Concept investor sessions. The PoC programme is a special challenge for communications. The grantees’ targets are very precise: The few hundred people around Europe who might be interested in investing in their projects or companies. For that, a classic ‘elevator pitch’ session to an audience of these potential investors is ideal: It frames the grantees as investable properties, provides a setting for direct networking with investors, and helps the grantees hone their sales skills. Science|Business has provided this setting for PoC grantees in February 2013 and July2014 – to great success. The format we propose is to provide a half-day pitch training session to a group of 5 grantees, and have them deliver their 3-minute elevator-pitch session in front of potential investors who will vote on the best one. With a large, Chinese gong, we keep the grantees to exactly the 3-minute limit of an investor elevator pitch. Based on our experience, we will focus our audience recruitment on angel and corporate investors with an interest in early-stage technologies, and group the grantees by broad sector (life sciences, ICT, etc.) We will vary the location and format during this contract, most often going either to major investment capitals or bolting the pitch session onto large investor events, such as annual meetings of the Science|Business Network, the European Industrial Research Managers Association and the European Business Angels Network.