There are people with money and people with ideas. They are often not the same people. How do they usually meet each other and collaborate? Startup founders look for opportunities to present their ideas to investors. To create perfect pitches, check the tips from investor Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Timofeev) and Andrew Kryvorchuk below.

A new initiative called Hey, Pitches! has been launched in Ukraine. It is founded by venture fund Adventures Lab together with Genesis Investments and focused on early-stage startups. Experts in the field of investment consult founders of startups that are looking for funding. These sessions take place offline monthly, participants are selected competitively.

The Adventures Lab founder Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Timofeev) and managing partner Andrew Kryvorchuk sum up typical mistakes and difficulties that founders face at the early stages of their projects.

The first meeting with startup founders in the context of Hey, pitches! project was hold in August. The organizers received 60+ applications from the whole Ukraine and selected top-5 of them. The selected candidates had to pitch their ideas orally supporting them with a visual presentation.

According to Andrew Kryvorchuk, the founders of the initiative got the idea to share their expertise while communicating with representatives of their portfolio startups and discussing key issues, questions, and plans.

‘Since we are doing this within the framework of an investment fund, why not create a project where competent expertise would become the cornerstone,’ says Andrew Kryvorchuk.

Both, Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Timofeev) and Andrew Kryvorchuk, note that startup founders often make a lot of mistakes while preparing their presentations. Sometimes, there is a lack of attention to important data or a surfeit of basic information.

During the session with the selected candidates, experts focus on mistakes and weak points of the analysed projects, they review budgeting, and highlight their competitive advantages. Andrew Kryvorchuk emphasizes that Hey, Pitches! is an “anti-consulting” initiative because it is free for the applicants. The experts do not take money for their sessions; their reward is a chance to find a brilliant startup!

‘Today in Ukraine, there are a lot of cool startups that are still developing in garages and apartments, but soon everyone will talk about them, and they will find European investors. Our goal is to reach these startups right now. To see them, help, prepare, nurture them, and help them get financing,’ explains Kryvorchuk.

According to Adventures Lab founder Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Timofeev), while building a startup it is very important to look at it from the side despite being in the center of the project. He says that “often, a founder is so in love with their startup, so much immersed in it that they rush to move forward with their vision without noticing other development options, cases, mistakes, business rivals, and vulnerabilities.” 

The task of Hey, Pitches! initiative is to expand founders` horizon and help them see their projects from different perspective. To achieve this goal, experts propose issues to be discussed and questions to be pondered. Reflecting them, founders can have meaningful insights, notes Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Timofeev).

Most of the projects that apply for participation in Hey, Pitches! are on the pre-MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage, it means that they have an idea and are developing a product with enough features to attract early-adopter customers able to validate the idea.

After the first session, Ruslan Tymofieiev (Ruslan Timofeev) commended the startup from Dnipro. That team applied many efforts to come to Kyiv with a van of equipment to present their idea. Also, the investor gives credits to teams from small towns or villages.

“One should not underestimate them: at first, they develop quite subtly, and then they appear somewhere in the West, and everyone talks about them,” he says.

To win the trust of a lot of users and gain popularity, a startup must be supported by investors. The experts believe that, following these recommendations, founders will be successful, and Hey, Pitches! community will turn into a platform for a great launch!