Startup/Entrepreneurship Development — University Program for Students — Pitch Coaching
Client: Seoul National Universityty
Program: Seoul National University's Global Startup BootCamp
Role: Assistant Program Manager, Pitch Coach
Customer KPIs Met:
# of student startups prepared for global markets: 7
# and amount of investment for students: ~$25,000 total for top 2 startups
The Goal
As entrepreneurism becomes more of a promising option, more people of all ages worldwide want to create their own businesses.
South Korea is one of the countries leading the growth of new tech-based startups world-wide.
As the number 1 university in South Korea, Seoul National University (SNU) wants to position their students to lead the creation of the next generation of global unicorns from South Korea.
The Need
While SNU has incredible budding South Korean talent, the staff responsible for entrepreneurial programs realized in order for their student startups to truly succeed globally, they needed more.
They realized their students needed:
- connections to funding,
- the latest industry information to deliver solutions that outdo the competition,
- and additional coaching to communicate their innovative ideas impactfully.
The Program
As the South Korean government agency responsible for global startups, we at Born2Global designed a program to help SNU provide their students these missing ingredients.
Many students applied and only 7 SNU student startups were selected to prepare their early-stage startup business plans for Seed Investment.
For the next two and half days, these promising startups gained
exclusive knowledge about startups, venture capital, and more from successful founders and industry experts
mentoring directly from founders of successful startups in their target market and industries
and pitch coaching (from yours truly) to sell their business plan to overseas investors for the chance to win a total of 3천만원 ($25,000) investment to support the growth of their startup.
The Program Results
The Born2Global center team helped a total of 7 student startups from Seoul National University.
Two student startups won a total of 30,000,000 ($25,000) to take their student startup to the next level.
Two student startups were offered the opportunity to win even more investment from a larger international pitching competition co-organized by Born2Global Center.
And now a word from the students
As one of the pitch coaches for the event, I had the privilege to help these promising students realizing opportunities for their business plans. Together, we distilled their big ideas into impactful pitches that revealed the huge business opportunity for investors - and customers.
I'm proud to share their comments on the pitch coaching they received from me below.
CEO of Aizen, 2nd Place Winner of Pitch Competition
The coaching also extremely helpful because Tomas gave us clear guidance on how we should present our data as well as showed us what effective storytelling looks like!
In previous programs, it felt as if people we were talking to didn't really understand our business, but with Tomas, our team felt that he really understood what we were trying to do and helped us effectively share that vision with other people.
It was as if we were working with a mentor/friend. Super comfortable discussion that was extremely constructive!!!
Co-CEO of Aizen, 2nd Place Winner of Pitch Competition
Compared to past coaching, Tomas is:
Very good at understanding the circumstances of early-stage start-ups
Honest with his feedback yet conveys the message in a not very hurtful way
Identifies strengths of our start-up that even we didn't know of
Organizes our strength into the pitch deck in a persuasive manner/method
At least for beginning start-ups like us, it would be very helpful for a professional like Tomas to check.