Hi guys,

Hope your weekend was good and that studying for the final exams in all your other courses is going well!

A couple of days ago I stumbled over a interesting tweet, labeled #140pitchen. This is something the tele market company Telenor initiated to “clean” the Swedish internet for the best entrepreneurial ideas. The campaign makes you, in 140 characters or less, pitch your business idea to three Swedish angel investors (Magnus Winberg, founder of Pricerunner, Susanna Falkengren, known from Draknästet and Karolina Räntfors, founder of Tic) by using the hashtag, and then the angels respond to your idea.

The angels had control over Telenor’s twitter account (the campaign is over now unfortunately..) and if they thought the idea was interesting they asked you to send a email to describe the idea further.

I thought the campaign was really cool but it got me thinking, is this all just a marketing trick from Telenor or what do they want to get from the campaign?  Also is 140 characters enough to describe an idea?

I think so. In a intervju one of the angels (Magnus Winberg) said that “it dosen’t have to be a complete idea, rather to capture my, and the other angel’s interest, by pinpointing a specific problem”. This is something we have talked about a lot in the course and it is nice to hear it from a real angel investor as well. In this way you don’t have time to present a business modell or describe your competitors like we did in our elevator pitch, but maybe it’s enough? Also this might be the new way to introduce your idea to investors (not using twitter necessarily). Because how often do you meet with a investor in person? Maybe you have to send something (email or post on linkedin) in written form and make it short enough so the person receiving it dosen’t throw it away.

I scrolled thru the tweets and got surprised to se responses from Telenor’s account (from the angels) on virtually every tweet! Some of the ideas got the respons “I don’t understand” while other got the respons “very interesting, please send me an email and describe more” (witch must be pretty cool to receive from a angel investor!).

The best tweet i read was simply, “UBER for tattoos”, without further explanation:) That tweet got the respons “now you got me interested! Email me an describe more”.

So, what do you guys think, will there come any businesses from this campaign or is it just a market trick and is this the new way to introduce your ideas to investors?

All the best!

/ Emil

PS: Since the campaign is over (and it was in Swedish) I didn’t post a link but you can search on the hashtag #140pitchen if you want do read som of the ideas and responses.

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