DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch Challenge:

 

In December of 2014, I submitted a proposal to receive funding for a project I was working on at the time called FitStart Kids. A month later I received notice that I was not awarded any of the funding; however, I had been selected as a student semi-finalist for the Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch Challenge. At the time, I had no prior experience in the world of startups or starting a business. In reality, I had simply checked a box at the bottom of the initial grant proposal that signaled my application may be sent to several other outside competitions. One of these was the Social Venture Partners competition.


The SVP Arizona Fast Pitch is a free two-month training and mentoring program for innovative non-profits that are affecting social change in Maricopa County. Twenty non-profit leaders are selected to participate based on their innovative approaches to creating social change and their potential for significant positive community impact. They receive training and mentoring over the course of two months from volunteer business professionals on how to succinctly and powerfully “tell their story”.


ASU students compete in the SVP Fast Pitch Competition as an extension of the ASU Changemaker Challenge program. The SVP Arizona Fast Pitch seeks students from across the university who are dedicated to making a difference in local and global communities through innovation. Students can win up to $2,000 to make their innovative project, prototype, venture or community partnership ideas happen.

 

With my selection as a semi-finalist, I was thrust into the world of startups and forced to rapidly learn how to craft a comprehensive business pitch. With an engineering degree and essentially zero business background, I tried to absorb the massive amounts of knowledge being thrown my direction. For two months I received intensive mentorship and guidance in order to learn what it meant to describe financial projections, market segmentation, and the underlying product, all while telling an engaging story. The extra level of intricacy came from having to convey all of this in less than three minutes to a panel of skilled professionals. During the two months, I was given the opportunity to “practice pitch” three different times in front of influential members within the SVP AZ community who served as judges. After the third pitch, I was selected as the student finalist. This meant that in March of 2015, I was not only awarded $2,000 to use towards my project, but I pitched on stage in front of an audience of over 400 people.

 

I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to have gotten involved in the SVP community so early in my college career. As a sophomore studying engineering, I had never taken serious consideration to the opportunities of entrepreneurship or business at a larger scale. SVP was my first introduction into how to create a business and what was involved in that process. From this moment, my love for startups was born. With the seed funds I won, I continued to pursue FitStart Kids. I went through the wild ride that is attempting to start a business; ultimately, I failed. However, this hands-on education I received has served me immensely during the remainder of my college experience. As I now work on a different startup endeavor, I have reflected on my failures and use them to contribute towards successes this time around. I believe that this is the most critical and valuable part of entrepreneurship – the constant cycle of failures, lessons learned, and successes. SVP put me on the path towards my ongoing entrepreneurial journey and opened my eyes to a passion I was previously unaware I had.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.