What did you miss at PitchBreakfast last week?
One company believes banks can be engaging and innovative. Another company has developed a lending solution for the midcap market and a third company has developed a request for proposal service solution to help increase productivity.
This month PitchBreakfast took place at Avid Xchange as part of Fintech Generations. All three companies pitching were Queen City Fintech accelerator alumni. During the event, each company had five minutes (with slides) to pitch followed by ten minutes of feedback from our panelists.
The panelists included:
- David Jones, General Partner, Bull City Ventures
- Keith Luedeman, Executive Director, Innovate Charlotte
- Garth Moulton, Co-Founder, Jigsaw
Get To the Next Meeting
Reinventing the banking wheel is not an easy task.
But Chad Huber, founder of Mimble (QC Fintech Class 9) believes banks can be as engaging and innovative as startups.
His company’s mission is to empower people financially by making saving as rewarding as spending. Mimble, which sits within your bank’s native app, accomplishes this by driving mobile engagement and diversifies a banks revenue strategy.
As Huber dove into all the benefits of Mimble, he lost track of time.
“You dove a little too deep into it,” David Jones said. “The goal of the pitch is to get their interest and get to the next meeting.”
Walk People Through the Process
Noam Mani spotted a problem in the midcap lending space. His solution? He founded Quartix (QC Fintech Class 6) which allows companies to use their purchasing stats to reduce supply chain inefficiencies, boost profitability and provide attractive invoice financing to suppliers.
How does Quartix accomplish this? Quartix buys from a company’s suppliers invoices that the customer have already approved. Quartix will collect upon invoice maturity, so their clients don’t pay a day too early.
Mani and Quartix have traction but did not list specific examples of the company’s work in the pitch.
“I wanted something to grab me up front,” Keith Luedeman said “I know you’ve been at this for a while and it would help if you highlighted some of the traction.”
Jones agreed that the pitch needed something more.
“Start off with a very tangible example and walk people through the process,” Jones said.
Talk About Your ‘Why’
How do you help increase a company’s productivity without increasing its number of team members?
Catapult (QC Fintech Class 6) is a request for proposal (RFP) service solution which provides a platform to help manage all of a company’s RFP opportunities while providing efficiencies in responding, team management and scoring responders.
Justin Witz founded Catapult to help address key struggles companies experience. During his energetic pitch he explained that without increasing team member headcount, Catapult increased productivity by over 30 percent with the time saved through automation, oftentimes paying for itself after ten RFP opportunities.
Garth Moulton cautioned Witz on his pace during his five minutes on stage.
“You got through on the time on a technicality, but you’ve got to slow it down a little bit,” Moulton said. “Your energy is really good, but watch the speed.”
Jones wanted to know more about what makes Catapult so unique.
“Talk about the why,” Jones said. “There are a lot of competitors if you search for RFP software. Maybe talk about why you are trying to compete in this market.”
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