Last week our third edition of the Vlerick Launchpad Meetup took place, this time in a virtual setting. The meetup is a pitch- and matchmaking event in collaboration with Vlerick and KBC. 20 startups and scale-ups were selected to pitch their product or service towards Vlerick iGMO partners – who are dynamic entrepreneurs from medium-sized enterprises with growth prospects.
The startups and scale-ups where divided in two tracks: Emerging Technologies and Workplace Essentials. The first track focusses on longer term innovative projects while the other track includes products or services that are more easily applicable in the Workplace Environment on a short term.
Win-Win
The Vlerick Launchpad Meetup is a mutually beneficial event: startups and scale-ups get noticed by established companies, and in return, iGMO partners get inspired to adopt smart technologies, gain knowledge and get in touch with ingenious teams.
The main reasons why we participated in this event were to get exposure to a large network and create brand awareness as a young evolving company.
Bizzcontrol & Trensition
These were the selected startups & scale-ups from the Vlerick iGMO Launchpad Meetup 2020:
Best pitches
Trensition
Vincent Defour, CEO of Trensition and track winner of Emerging Technologies, created together with Trensition’s team a data driven trend intelligence engine to monitor, analyze and predict business trends. The uniqueness of Trensition is that the software can deliver customized information about upcoming trends per market. Winning this event came as a surprise for Vincent. However, he’s excited Trensition got the attention from the audience, especially from retail and HR companies.
“As a startup it’s difficult to make yourself visible in the market, especially in corona times. The network of EY and Vlerick has offered great opportunities.”
Trensition
Bizzcontrol
Lode, the IT genius, and Nicholas, the financial savvy from Bizzcontrol, also participated with their brand new project. They only launched their product in June 2020 and already won some prizes on multiple events, including the first place for Workplace Essentials in this Launchpad Meetup. Bizzcontrol offers an online platform that transforms static accounting data into real-time dynamic reports and analyses. This allows the accountant to drastically increase the advisory service towards his/her customer in a very efficient way.
“Participating in this event confirmed that we’re on the right track, our product has been endorsed by people who know something about it.”
Bizzcontrol
Learn more about how we connect startups with corporates!
Online Pitching Tips
During this 2020 pandemic, we noticed that startup founders and entrepreneurs are often struggling to adapt their pitch to online pitching sessions.
That’s why we put together some tips for a successful virtual pitch:
- Make your pitch as effective as possible, also online. Shift some emphasis on key points, use solid sentences, add catchy stories, add nice and clear visuals …
- Try to catch the attention of the audience. Many video conference tools have interactive features such as “thumbs ups” or a like/applaud button. Use these features to your advantage to keep the audience engaged.
- Practice, practice, practice. This also includes knowing how to use the assigned platforms. Don’t get yourself in trouble with the practical details of virtual presentations. Make sure you know about the platform’s useful features. Is the lighting good? Does your audio work well? Do you have a suitable (virtual) background?
- As you’ll plan, you will identify virtual pitching elements that might be more challenging. For example, instead of having an audience member demonstrate something, perform the demo yourself.
“Showing people something tangible during your pitch helps to give better insights in what you are actually proposing”
Bizzcontrol