Are you ready for Udacity’s PitchTank? If you’ve got amazing ideas, have your sights set on an entrepreneurial career, and are motivated to master the necessary skills, then your answer should be yes!
What Is PitchTank?
PitchTank is an amazing new event put on by our Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree program. It’s an exclusive opportunity to pitch your idea to a top investor in a 1:1 session, and compete for a $1000 prize! If your entry is selected, you’ll get to pitch to one of these four PitchTank investors:
George Zachary, General Partner, Charles River Ventures
George led Charles River’s early stage investments in Twitter, Yammer (enterprise social networking; acquired by MSFT 6/2012 for $1.2B), Millennial Media (mobile advertising; IPO March 2012; NYSE MM), Geni (social networking based on genealogy; acquired by MyHeritage Ltd.), Pebble, Pillpack, Udacity, Wonder Workshop, Scribd, Cotap, and Flipagram. See more…
Peter Levine, General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
Peter Levine is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He was previously senior vice president and general manager of the Data Center and Cloud Division at Citrix where he was responsible for revenue, product management, business development, and strategic direction. See more…
Mark Kvamme, Co-founder & Partner, Drive Capital
When he’s not racing (and sometimes crashing) off-road trucks, Mark is a co-founder and partner at Drive Capital. Before Drive Capital, Mark was the Interim Chief Investment Officer and President of JobsOhio, a private, nonprofit corporation leading Ohio’s job-creation efforts. See more…
Kay Krafft, CEO, Bertelsmann Education Group
Kay Krafft is the CEO of the Bertelsmann Education Group. Until early 2014, he was Chief Investment Officer of music rights management company BMG. Kay has been instrumental in setting-up BMG as part of Bertelsmann, selecting and structuring a partnership with investment firm KKR late 2009. See more…
Exciting? You bet! This could be your big break!
Your Journey To Success
Ultimately, this is about your journey to success. It begins with your hopes and dreams. That’s the energy that carries you into the Nanodegree program in the first place. Your faith in an amazing new future. From there, it’s all about refining, polishing, and perfecting the raw material of those aspirations, turning your visions into reality. PitchTank is a logical (and exciting!) extension of our commitment to your success. We’re providing you a rare and exclusive opportunity to do something all budding entrepreneurs dream of: the opportunity to pitch!
Traits & Skills of a Tech Entrepreneur
Becoming a successful Tech Entrepreneur takes hard work, and requires mastering important skills. Check out this infographic to learn more about the skills and traits of a successful tech entrepreneur (just click the image!):
Making Your Pitch
The final step in your amazing journey is telling your story. This is when you combine your passion and your dedication—the dreams you’ve pursued, and the skills you’ve mastered—into one focused, intense, clear-eyed and visionary presentation of your offering to the world. This is when you make … your pitch!
Pitch Perfect
In entrepreneurial circles, the idea of “the pitch” has incredible resonance. SharkTank is responsible for some of the sensationalizing, certainly, but amongst entrepreneurs and investors alike, the pitch has a long history of significance, and boasts a treasure chest full of success stories. Remember Loopt, from the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in 2008? They sold for 43 million post-pitch. How about Yext, who debuted at TechCrunch 50 in 2009? They’ve raised about 65 million since their pitch, and are currently worth about 200 million. You can read a great many more famous pitches stories in this Business Insider article, and if you’d like to see the now-famous pitch decks that helped launch companies like Buffer and AirBnB, treat yourself with a visit to this post from Onboardly.
So, is your idea the next AirBnB?
