Many of my friends and I have been hooked by a reality show
called Shark Tank, in which budding entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas to
a panel of seasoned business people including Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran and
see if any of them will bite. A particularly interesting panel from today’s
event was a real life, real time version of that exact program up on stage.
Four startups, each in relatively different industries, had five
minutes to pitch their ideas and general business model in front of a panel of
four venture capital investors who ultimately crowned a winner. The businesses
included a web tool that helped users identify and turn off any cookies they
have on the web, a website that helped customers order online delivery from
restaurants and food trucks, a company that helped build paywalls that were dismantled
through video viewership rather than direct payment, and a job matching firm
that connected prospective employees with opportunities abroad.
Watching the pitches and subsequent judge grilling was both
vastly entertaining and extremely interesting. As a member of the SIG team at
Arnold, I was really excited to see how the model we use for any new business
pitch, marketing plan, or client project, applies to the building and
development of a startup, covering all the vitals that the investors were
curious about. Making this connection helped me see that a strong foundation in
the key areas of a business might not guarantee startup success, but it helps
pave the path to that ultimate goal.
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