IMBATECH, Sthlm Tech Fest and pitching

Hello world!

IMBATECH is here to conquer the world, move fast and break things! We consist of introverts and extroverts, thinkers and talkers, idea generators and doers, and we are super excited to ignite our entrepreneurial spirits!

Our first step of this journey was visiting Sthlm Tech Fest – the startup event of the year, hosting new entrepreneurs on the tech arena, CEOs of global success stories as well as investors looking for the next big thing.

Hundreds of new startups had invested in a booth on this fair, each and every one of them showing a child-like enthusiasm for their product (mostly mobile applications) when getting attention from visitors, no matter whether you were a million dollar investor, a competitor or, just as us, KTH students looking for inspiration.

We spent most of the day in the presentation hall. Different topics were dealt with during the day – “Future of Games” and “CSR” were among our favorites. For every topic we got to see ~5 startup founders presenting their idea, and afterwards they got feedback on their idea as well as their pitch by a panel consisting of successful and reputable people from the industry. After seeing almost 30 pitches during the day, our favorite pitcher turned out to be Hjalmar Winbladh from Wrapp. Here is some advice, inspired by his nearly flawless pitch:

• Focus on the problem, the itch, and how your idea will solve this. A popular concept was to focus on a person that would use their application. When Hjalmar presented the Wrapp application, an app which would give you more benefits as a customer, the pitch started with “This is Lisa, and she loves shopping clothes and books”. Afterwards we got to see a sequence of pictures of Lisa shopping. Among other things, we got to see her buying a book at Akademibokhandeln, which generated an offer in her app saying “Do you want to read your book while enjoying a coffee at Espresso House for 50% off?” Seeing Lisa using this app planted the idea in our heads that this would increase our own shopping experiences as well.
• Compare your idea to success stories. Hjalmar showed us a 2×2 matrix including Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn and Wrapp, claiming that Wrapp was for your consuming network what the others were for social and professional networks. When he explained this to us in such a comprehensible way, we wanted to invest straight away!

This was a memorable day for us. What we will remember the most was the ambience of this startup sphere, where everyone is inspired by each other and sharing is caring. Hopefully, we will end up here as well in a foreseeable future.