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As part of trying to put together the Pitch Masters group, this is an outline of the format for the two kinds of meetings. I would appreciate feedback on it:

Practice Sessions: Open and social, held in an informal environment, such as a coffee shop or bar. If investors want to come to this meeting, they must also play the role of entrepreneur and have a pitch to deliver.
1. 15 min – Meet and greet time where people practice delivering their Elevator Pitches.
2. 30 min (broken into 2×15 min sessions) – We would split the group into two, one group takes the role of investor and the other entrepreneur, after 15 minutes, you switch rolls. A rapid public pitching round that each iteration is timed, perhaps 4 minutes for the pitch and questions, and then 1 minute for feedback. After each time, the entrepreneurs for the round play musical chairs and go pitch to a new person. You get 3 times to deliver your pitch to someone, and then you listen to other people for three rounds.
3. 15 min – Wrap up and group discussion, talk about things that were experienced, new books, techniques, etc.
4. Take a video of some of these pitches to use for promotional material as well as for feedback for individuals.
5. The practice sessions could be quite informal, and would work with as few as 4 people, but would probably be better with 6 or more.
Matching Sessions: Location could be an office or just somewhere that has spaces that could be used privately. I think a good size for this would be to find 5-10 investors and 15-40 entrepreneurs, but could be sized to fit available resources.
1. 30 min – Meet and greet, it would be helpful to have some listing of areas of interest or expertise for all participants so that potential matches could meet socially before the pitching rounds. Investors get “dance cards” that are for booking their pitch sessions. Each entrepreneur gets 3-4 pitch slots and must manage their own sign ups to prevent conflicts (ie. Session A, B, C, D).
2. 30 min – Public pitches, 7 minutes each, four rounds per investor.
3. 15 min – Recess and arrangements for private pitching.
4. 1 hour – Given what private meeting facilities are available, arrange private pitches for investor/entrepreneur pairs or groups. This will facilitate discussing topics that are needed to be covered by non-disclosure agreements, etc.
5. Retire to a nearby pub, make announcements if there are any to be announced.
6. It would be requested that angels give feedback to the people they interviewed, either catching up with them at the pub, etc. or via a note afterwards.

Kai-Fu Lee, ex-President of Google Greater China’s excellent presentation in Carnegie Mellon

Pitch Masters HK Proposed Format

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