Baltic Booster finetuned pitching skills for Creative Business Cup

On June 6 and 7 participants of Creative Business Cup  from three Baltic countries  finetuned their pitching skills   in Sigulda, Latvia to be better prepared for national finals.

Although most of the participants had prepared their 30second, 3 minutes and 10 minutes pitches, the trainer Kenneth Agerholm from Danmark tested their ability to pitch themselves differently using several formats beginning from short description of the project, „grandma pitch“ or telling your life story within a minute. At first the exercise seemed to be easy but step by step it turned out to be more complicated. Every pitch format received immediate constructive  feedback from the ohter participants and from the trainer.

The constructive feedback and suggestions to improve the pitch were probably  the most useful for the participants. „ It wasn’t so easy to focus my pitch to these things which are the most important for this particular audience – we ourselves know everything about our products,“  said Triin Mägi, introducing her ekological cosmetics brand Sõsar. Marko Kiisa from Aus Design added that it was important to undrestand the audience and build up the presentation accordingly. „It was good to test different versions of my pitch and see which one is the most impressive,“ he said.

What are the audience i.e. investors and the jury focusing on? „ Creative competencies are crucial for the success of the business concept, the concept has to have large market potential and it has to be competitive, quite easily scalable and the team has to burn for their idea,“ explained Kenneth Agerholm.

Last years Latvian winner and CBC first runner-up Gigibocks encouraged participants to go for it and gave some useful tips and tricks:

• Practice your pitch until you know it by heart even when waking up at night
• Try to relax and rest before going to the satge
• Do not think too small – you are participating in a global contest!
• Be ready for unpleasant questions
• Be prepared to pitch when your slideshow crashes
• Forget that normally you are quite modest – you are stepping into the hall of possibilities and you should take everything out of it. Mingle and find contacts

Before the CBC Gigiblocks had sold some 200 pieces of their product, now, half a year later  their already export Gigiblocks to 16 countries and have doubled their last year’s turnover  within three months.

Baltic Booster was organised for preparing the participants for CBC  national contests and  to understand what is to be expected to happen in Kopenhagen.

Baltic Booster  in Sigulda was organised by  Latvian Young Entrepreneur Center and supported by Sigulda County and Danish Institute.