Launchpad2X and Venture Atlanta are teaming on a new pitch series to help female founders.
“First Friday Pitches” starts March 5. The series, which will take place over the next four months, aims to give more women practice pitching their companies — both for soliciting investments and for customer sales.
Female founders in any industry are welcome to register for the series. Each founder will give a five-minute pitch followed by five minutes of feedback, said Christy Brown, president of LaunchPad2X, which is a two-year accelerator focused on helping female founders.
A new panel of four local investors and mentors will judge the pitches each month, Brown said.
The series leads up to the annual Venture Atlanta and Launchpad2X Pitch Showcase on June 16, which was started to help women practice for the Southeast investor conference. The judges will choose a winner from the series that will score a spot in that showcase as well as a spot in Launchpad2X’s Core Flight Program, which is a week-long crash course for female entrepreneurs, Brown said.
"We were already doing the pitches once a year, but we’re trying to grow exponentially,” Brown said. “We hope that we can create visibility and exposure for Venture Atlanta but also support for these female founders.”
Women tend to struggle with confidence and financial literacy, Brown said, which she sees as their most common mistakes when pitching their companies. Not knowing financial information or plans for revenue and scaling are “big red flags” for most investors, she said.
With pitch practices as well as business programs, the LaunchPad2X accelerator aims to give women the skills they need to successfully move from founder to CEO and scale their companies.
Now in its 10th year, LaunchPad2X also plans to expand participation in their classes through virtual learning to reach founders across the world.
With about 200 alumni of LaunchPad2X programs, Brown said the organization’s goal is to reach 10,000 women through both in-person and digital classes in 2021.
