TiE Austin Funding Forum
May 13 2009

Last night I participated in annual event put on by TiE Austin called The Funding Forum.  I participated last year as a reviewer to help teams prepare for their pitches and as a last minute panelist to review pitches.  This year I was a panelist listening to pitches but was kind of a moderator too.

The companies rotate tables and pitch their ideas via their PC or hardcopy PowerPoint slides to a few potential investors.  Many angel investors, VCs, entrepreneurs, and members from the technology startup community are present.

At my table, we had 4 different companies.  One of them had already come in to the Austin Technology Incubator to present so I was familiar with them.  Two of them had very nice, well thought out presentations and a did a good job presenting their ideas.  One of the presenters was not very well prepared.

It’s a great place for new entrepreneurial teams to practice their pitch and get advice from experienced individuals.  Some take feedback gracefully and some don’t.

One of the investors at my table had funded a company he met at a prior Funding Forum so it seems to work, on occasion, as it’s designed to!

I left just after the company pitches ended for a variety of reasons, with one of them being that I started to wonder if I was truly in the right space-time continuum.

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