Last Friday saw a group of startups gathered in Central London for the Entrepreneur Games, the latest in Tech City’s series of free speed mentoring events designed to help early-stage startups hone their pitches and get tips from proven business leaders on how best to attract funding and sell their idea to potential investors.

It was a great afternoon with some excellent pitches – but as with any competition, there could only be one winner. On this occasion, that was Recip.ly, a free online service that aims to revolutionise the way people choose recipes, purchase ingredients for them and plan their meals. We asked Co-Founder Nick Holzherr to share his thoughts on the event…

On Friday I was invited to come along to the Tech City “Entrepreneur Games”, an event that saw 11 start-ups pitch their businesses investment pitch, with my startup Recip.ly.

The first round was one-on-one pitches to some fantastic mentors from Seedcamp, MindCandy, venture capital companies and angel investors. Everyone was scored individually before the top three pitched to the crowd. I was lucky to go onto the next round where we got the opportunity to pitch to the entire room before being scored by attendees in Strictly Come Dancing style (everyone held up a number above their heads before the judges carefully counted the votes).

We won “Gold”, a great vote of confidence by everyone at the event. So was it useful? In the individual sessions we very quickly learnt that everyone had different ideas on what should be included in an investment pitch. The one-on-one format worked really well for feedback because rather than read out questions or feedback in front of a panel, mentors were much more hands on and detailed in feedback. We received feedback on individual slides and specific content, rather than the more general comments received at the usual pitching type events. Mentors were practical with their advice on the pitch and business, and we quickly had a list of implementable feedback.

It was the first time we had pitched our business for investment so the feedback we received was invaluable. By listening to the questions from the mentors we quickly built a real understanding of which parts of the pitch we had to tweak to explain ourselves better. Half way through the event Glenn Shoosmith, founder and CEO of BookingBug, spoke about his journey raising investment.

The insights from him about his journey complemented the rest of the information we received really well. One useful point I took away: a lead investor is really important in raising investment. Glenn also described how his journey to raise investment took much longer than most people think – an experience I’m sure many can identify with. We definitely got the impression from mentors that many people try to raise investment too early. Investors want low-risk investments which means that traction, or at least some metrics on user behaviour, is essential.

Overall, for any start-ups currently at a stage where they are thinking about raising investment, this event is definitely one of the best places to do your first pitch. I doubt anyone would attend without making a number of changes for the better. The one-on-one format is a great way to practice before a pitch to a larger audience.

About Recip.ly Recip.ly is a free online service that will revolutionise the way people choose recipes, purchase ingredients for them and plan their meals. A service that can be integrated by recipe publishers or installed as a browser plugin by users, Recip.ly allows people browsing for recipes to purchase all ingredients with a click of a button. Recip.ly “interprets” recipes, understands what type of ingredients the user would choose for that recipe and connects with online supermarkets to purchase the ingredients automatically.

Plea for your help! Recip.ly is looking for people who currently regularly purchase groceries online to take part in our study. If you’re interested, please email [email protected] directly. They are also doing a short online survey of user habits that they would love responses to. Visit www.recip.ly for a link.