There certainly was lot's of laughter and energy today at the Stanford Campus when 60 Stanford MBA students made their pitches to CRV on the CRV Entrepreneur Idol contest. As yet another creative idea from the guys at CRV. George, Bill and Susan let 56 Standford MBA students and potential entrepreneurs-to-be, pitch in 60 seconds. I watched in the background as George, Bill, Susan and Matt Marshall from VentureBeat listened to 56 pitches in 60 minutes...
Afterwards, George made a short presentation of CRV and its' new exciting initiative - QuickStart. Maxthon and Skyrider, was presented as two very exciting and promising companies in the CRV portofolio with a particularily explosive growth and potential.
After the presentation, 5 lucky pitchers where chosen by the panel. Two received honorary mention and collected $100 each. The remaining 3 pitched again in front of the whole audience, and the audience then voted for the best pitch by applause volume...(and it was high :)
The winner (image below) won $2000 and the other two each $1000 - not back for a 60 minutes appearance...Needless to say it was very funny, sort of Ido-meets-stand-up-meets-VC. You could really feel the excitement among the MBA students and you could see that George, Bill and Susan really enjoyed it too.
John Furrier and Valerie Cunningham from Podtech.Net made sure that it was all documented so tune into Podtech.Net for full video coverage on the event.
CRV is definitely disrupting the traditional VC business model and seem to be enjoying the ride too.
For me it was all clear after having watching 60 pitches. It is the way you frame your pitch that makes the big difference. Energy and
presence is king - just like in IDOL - but it obviously has to be accompanied by a good ideas too of course.
Thanks to George, Bill and Susan for dragging me along. You guys are winners!
See my Flickr for more pics of the event and others here. Susan Wu and Matt Marshall should soon have some posts up covering the event with more details.
Now I'm off to Mayfiels Holiday Party and tomorrow I will talking at Asian Ventures. Man I am jet lagged and the week has only just begun...
Technorati Tags: Bill Tai, Charles River Ventures, CRV, George Zachary, Podtechnet, Stanford, Susan Wu, Valerie Cunningham, VC, Venture Capital
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