If you are on the verge of creating a venture video pitch then it is a must for you to learn how to make an excellent one. Remember, this video will be a presentation of your current business or your brainchild which you are about to launch. Customers and investors both will judge your capabilities based on how well the video depicts them.

If you have gathered all the material, have written the script and you are now finally about to produce the video then these tips are for you. Follow them and you will ‘rise and shine’ with your venture pitch video!

Your Video’s Structure:

Before you get hold of the camera and start shooting, it is important for you to plan the structure of your video. The flow of the video is based on the structure you have created. It is important for the video to be in a proper flow or else your customers/investors will feel awkward. A short video pitch which is no longer than 30 seconds is best. So, keeping that in mind, you have 30 seconds to deliver your message.

Steps for Shooting the Video:

Here are some of the basic steps you need to follow for your video pitch:

• Do not use any special effects. Your video should be all about the business, products, services and the people involved in the process. Anything additional will break the momentum.
• Use a simple and plain background. White backgrounds work best when it comes to such videos.
• Use proper lighting. It should neither be too bright nor too dark. Use canvas shades if necessary.
• Use a tripod to make sure the video is steady. Steady images and videos look professional instead of the shaky ones.
• Use an external microphone. Don’t be dependent upon the microphone of your camera. While shooting, the camera will make a lot of noises internally and this can affect the sound quality badly.
• Keep your images and videos smaller in size. Your customers and investors will most likely view it online so it is important that the video is easy to download.
• Try not to use the auto-focus option present in most cameras. This option can make sudden unwanted changes within the video which might be a problem.
• Don’t change the zoom or the pan while you are shooting your video.
• Use reliable software to transfer the video from your camera to the computer.

Editing the Video:

First off, do not make any unwanted changes in the video. Check the video quality and the audio quality thoroughly. Use good video editing software such as CyberLink PowerDirector, Corel VideoStudio Pro X3 and Adobe Premiere Elements. Remember, editing should be your least concern. Try and make the video up to the mark so that it requires minimal editing. If you have used a fine HD video recording camera then you shouldn’t be worried about the editing part. Canon, Sony CyberShot and Nikon are some of the best camera brands around from which you should select. 

Creating a venture pitch video can be a great way of attracting investors and customers alike. If you haven’t done this before then probably it will sound like rocket science to you but it is not. Creating a venture pitch video is quite an easy task if you have what it takes. Most novice video makers focus more on the equipment and less on the script of the video which is the basic reason of its downfall.

Remember, the quality of your video is determined by the matter you include and the way you shoot it. Both of the aspects are important but priority should be given to the main script. What are you including in the video? How will the video flow step by step? What is the main purpose and theme of the video? And a plethora of other questions are there which you need to consider before you start making your first ever venture pitch video.

To make it simpler, here are some tips on what you should focus on while making the video:

• Keep it Short and to the Point: To be honest, that is something we have been listening to since childhood by our teachers, our parents, our co-workers, our business partners and a number of other people. But, how many of us actually practice it? NONE! And, when it comes to venture pitch videos, believe it or not, this rule of thumb is the most important one to stick to. The shorter and to the point your video is the more chances you have convincing the target populace.
• Demonstration is Stronger than Explanation: What most people do in their venture pitch video is that they try and explain stuff more rather than demonstrating it. Remember, the main purpose of creating a venture pitch video is to ‘show’ people what’s in there for them. Demonstrating what you are saying through examples is the best way to go by!
• Have a Blasting Opening: The way you start your video determines whether viewers will be interested in watching it completely or not. Start with a blasting introduction of whatever you are talking about. If it’s a video for fund raising purposes then start with some of your major achievements. This is the most crucial part of your venture video pitch so make sure you do it right.
• Choose the Right Tools: It is important to thoroughly research for the best tools available that can maximize the effect of your venture pitch video. Keep the video of adequate size; enough for any person with or without broadband to download. On the other hand, make sure the layout of your video is very user friendly. If you can create sections in your video then it is the ideal thing to do.
• Editing is the Key: You never know what mistakes you have done throughout the video so you must edit it once you have captured it completely.

Whether it’s your first pitch video or the 10^th one, these tips should always be considered before you go for it!

So what is the best site to post your brand new super duper web startup. Hard to tell right? So much junk out there, so many repetitive web forms to fill in, so many wasted cycles. Wanna a shortcut? Want the top 10 list to enter and hide the rest? Well, you luck is about to change, here are the top 10 sites to submit to so you can start to generate much needed traffic to your site. 

Some weeks back we collected a list of websites to help a small startup, such as ours, get some much needed attention. I entered almost as many as we could and now using the power of google analytics and Excel I will hopefully point you in the direction of which is the best places to apply to!

Here is the list in order of the traffic these types of site brought to us in the last few weeks

1. Killer Startups - 25% 
2. App Storm - 23% 
3. StartupMeme - 14% 
4. onstartups - 9% 
5. DIY Startup News - 7% 
6. Hacker News - 7% 
7. startups.com - 5% 
8. epiclaunch.com - 5% 
9. reddit.com - 2% 
10. sprouter.com  - 2% 

On a negative note, we have tried to get on some of the big websites like techcrunch.com and mashable.com but unless you are a big player with lots of funding it seems very unlikely. we keep posting & keep hosting. 

Hopefully, someday soon people but venturesocially.com on the list of places to submit to!

I am a hobbyist plain and simple. The web site I run is run purely for pleasure and I am not looking for financial gain but to help my fellow startup enthusiasts navigate their way through the arduous task of VC pitching.

I have noticed that I have costs to keep up, for some strange reason in a fit of web 2.0 madness I migrated away from Bluehost.com to mediatemple.com, I kept seeing their ads and was lured in by their shiny new consoles. I had to do it, now I pay 70 dollars a month for barely adequate performance and a whole pile of capacity I just don’t need.

I have poured months of development effort plus hosting costs and other miscellaneous costs like images, ssl certificates, ads, etc. It all starts to mount up, I haven’t quite worked out the cost, it’s not huge but it’s not small either, a nice holiday somewhere.

I hear you ask why? Does your site generate any revenue? Do people to flock to it? Is it absurdly famous? Alas the answer is that my site is not famous, that the revenue generate is less than Lady Gaga’s Spotify revenue and not too many people visit the site.

So why all the effort and cost? What for? Well it’s because running a small startup is my hobby. I enjoy it and like many hobbies I am willing to invest modest amounts of my own cash to fund the business. This dawned on me a few weeks ago, I always thought I was bootstrapped and running this for profit but I’m not. I have a good job that I don’t plan to leave but I need another outlet, I needed to make all the decisions where as in my job I am a small cog in an enormous machine where not all decisions lie with me.

I got to thinking how many other people are like me, people who love the taste of the startup world but just as a hobby. I come up to my office every now and again and when I have the energy and creative intent I sit and I code away at my site. Sometimes I take a few days off and tell my wife not to expect much from me as I sit and code and code some new feature out. I am planning another one of these rampant sessions closer to the holidays.

I think there is another type of startup company out there, not bootstrapped but hobbystrapped. Hobbystrapped startups may dream of becoming bigger than sliced bread but in reality they know they are just like the model airplane enthusiasts in their back garden building planes to fly on Sundays mornings in the park. 

A few years back I had attended a talk by Mary Poppendieck on lean software practices and have had an interest ever since. So much so that on my desk right now lays a half read copy of “The Toyota Way” by Jeffrey K. Liker.

Then last week I was merrily reading my twitter feed when I noticed a talk by Eric Ries on Lean Startup. Given my attempts to build a bootstrap startup and my interest in the every expanding world of lean software development I decided would go check it out even if it was on a Friday evening after work! Does no one else have plans for a Friday night.

So plans cancelled, and ticket book (ok I didn’t book my ticket until the morning of the talk, which pushed the price up from £15 to £25 which I thought was a little on the cheeky side J) I finished work Friday night at 6 and headed towards Old Street tube, not too far since I am based around Bank tube.

I had never been to TechHub or any form of incubator before and I was trying to imagine what it would be like. I firstly assumed it was done some alleyway in Old Street and the top or bottom of a murky unloved building that was two violations away from a demolishing order. How wrong I was!! I stumbled out of Old Street station and in a few short steps I had found the TechHub offices on the ground floor of a pretty office building in a what can only be described as a wonderful location. Obviously these guys have been watching Location, Location, Location.

Inside it was spacious, not  uber-trendy but evidently they feel corrugated plastic is the next big thing in industrial office design. Wifi passwords and hashtags were printed out on A4 paper and spread generously around the room, which made it look at little lo-tech. I think a few 42” TVs from Argos attached around the room showing information and the #TechHubFriday twitter free would really make a difference and give the room the high-tech feel that it deserves.

That was the venue what about Eric I hear you ask! Eric kicked off with unusually encouraging people to use their mobiles and computers and to twitter each other throughout his speech. I saw one fellow startup enthusiastic use his rather large mac book pro, his ipad and iphone all at the same time, which proves to my friends that I am not alone in my abilities to tech-multitask. Now since I was standing I wasn’t able to take many notes so I may easily leave out parts of Erics talk or mix up the timeline of the sections. So please forgive me!   

To cut to the chase a lean startup is

-         Focus on reducing the time between iterations will increase the chances of a successful venture

-         Speed is the competitive advantage. 

Eric started talking about the classification of what makes a successful startup, what really makes it successful from a valuation point of view. He popped up a graphic from circa 2006 showing all the Web 2.0 startups that were making waves (I wonder was google wave out back then?!) next he showed a more updated version of this graphic. On the 2010 version he showed the huge number of startups that have gone out of business or haven’t made it. There was some contention at this point with the classification, for example Gmail and Facebook looked to be less successful than startups that were bought up or consumed. I personally didn’t feel that, I felt that this graphic was not to scale and thus facebook versus smaller startups was not a fair fight.

Shortly after this he took us on a little history tour of manufacturing process starting with the traditional waterfall methodology which he noted is no longer used in manufacturing all the way to Toyota Production System. Interestingly enough he never referenced Toyota throughout his speech, whenever I have been to a ‘Lean’ talk Toyota is used as the glimmering star that all others should look to follow. I hope one day Toyota will make it back to the pedestal of Lean manufacturing and put the quality issues behind the once greatly admired company.

But let’s skip ahead to the main core of what Eric feels a Lean Startup consists of (I am not skipping because I have no notes to base this blog on!!). Eric has been burned, burned badly he created an IM add on when IM was king to allow teenagers talk to each other as 3D Avatars (why?). He spent 6 months pouring his life into the code and developing an application that could talk to all major IM networks. When they went to entice young adolescents to use the application they simple refused citing they liked new IM networks.  So much time and money wasted but at least Eric learned something new right!

Eric said that entrepreneurs have the power of reality distortion field; they can make people around them but into their vision of the future. The goal then of the startup is to find the right practical application that is in line with their vision. Not I easy I hear you say. So a startup has to be constructed in a way that it can learn.

The startup is then on a quest to instrument and measure its progress. Always innovating and working with the customer to validate these ideas. Which reminds me, the unit of progress is not dollars or pounds or euros not each Mexican pesos but Validated Learning. Validate learning is the ability to measure your success on actionable, accessible and auditable data points.

So there is it, as far as I could gleam the key is to as fast as your little startup legs can carry you and to continually mark your progress against validated learning. Obviously this builds on top of methodologies such as lean development but is geared towards a product where you do not know if there is a market for your product.

I always feel there were two ‘Lean’ processes in software development and now if you look at with respect to start ups you will see three lean processes which are internally independent but coupled and interconnected

1.       Lean Software development

2.      Lean Project Management

3.      Lean Startup Strategy

Hopefully I have captured the essence of Eric’s talk last night and if I remember more as the day goes on I will certainly reedit the article.

Overall a great night at my first TechHub event!! Looking forward to the next one

Hi all, so this weeks major fixes are now live and tested (and they seem to be working…. yeah!)

The lastest feature of the weekend is the new powerpoint pitch,  this allows you to upload a powerpoint presentation as the cornerstone of your pitch rather than a video. 

Once uploaded your presentation will be turned into a slide show which sits on top of your pitch information 

Brand new feature, let us know if you see any issue!