The Day After Dreampitch
It’s Friday, the day after Dreampitch. A whirlwind of a day – of a week actually – and an absolutely incredible experience. Although Grapevine6 didn’t take home the big prize, we are honoured that we got the chance to pitch in front of Salesforce, two other finalists from Canada’s vibrant tech community and nearly 1,000 audience members including the talented Grapevine6 team and a few family members. We know we’ve won just for having been there.
Focus and preparation
The week leading up to the pitch, my team and I focused on not only distilling all the great features of Grapevine6, our vision for the future and our recent successes down into five short minutes, but also doing it all without speaking at twice the normal pace. I didn’t realize how difficult that last hurdle would be. A lot of preparation goes into the development of such a short presentation and, with such high stakes, it requires a lot of discipline to stick to a script.
Heart palpitations and butterflies
The experience itself was both exhilarating and nerve-wracking. What happens if I get on stage and forget everything I need to say? What if I have technical issues? What if I trip walking to the stage? We’ve all had those thoughts before a big presentation. Even though the days and minutes leading up to the pitch were a cacophony of heart palpitations and butterflies, I would do it again without hesitation. I didn’t forget my lines, the slides worked perfectly and I stayed on my two feet! I loved presenting and connecting with the audience.
The team at Salesforce also did a wonderful job in helping us prepare for the event and getting us comfortable in the hour leading up to the presentation. We were overwhelmed with the attention to detail that went into this conference at every touchpoint (there were even Salesforce pillows in the green room!). Every aspect of the process – from the initial call for entries to the moment we walked on stage – was managed to perfection.
An experience you’ll never forget
If you’re considering putting your ideas out there and entering a pitch competition, I highly recommend you do it. It’s an experience you’ll never forget. It forced us to really think about the essence of what we do and how we do it and I think we are stronger as both a company and a brand as a result of this experience. We’ll take the lessons we learned and apply them to our next big pitch.
If you were at Dreampitch and want to learn more about Grapevine6 or just say hello, feel free to download the app at grapevine6.com or reach out to us directly at hello@grapevine6.com.