Join us for lunch on Wednesday, March 26, and discover the strategies early-stage entrepreneurs need to secure investment from savvy investors both in Canada and the U.S., and learn how to avoid being ghosted when sending a pitch deck to potential investors.

Learning Outcomes:

· Recognize and avoid the most common red flags that can derail pitches

· Unlock the one element that is 10X more impactful than your brand

· Leverage the power of threes to build a more resilient business

· Effectively highlight your idea’s true potential and market value

· Use visuals to clearly demonstrate why investors should choose your startup

· Master the most persuasive way to respond to post-pitch questions from investors or judges

· Learn about the five key factors, including intellectual property, that investors focus on when assessing startups

Speakers:

Brandy Old, Startup & Pitch Coach

Brandy is a startup mentor and business coach who helps people commercialize new technologies, especially digital and life science solutions.

As a certified IDEO Design Thinker, Brandy helps start-ups view problems from various perspectives and formulate innovative solutions not obvious to others. Brandy is also a certified Lean Startup coach and UX Designer, allowing her to apply both business development and practical prototyping skills to de-risk startup-up ideas earlier to find product-market fit.

Brandy holds a Master’s in Social Impact, which allows her to assist social purpose and mission-driven companies build businesses that do good.

Craig Elias, Startup & Pitch Coach

Craig is a startup mentor, sales expert, pitch coach, and ecosystem builder who loves spending time with growth-minded individuals.

His first startup went from initial launch to being funded by a Tier 1 Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist and being twice named by Dow Jones as one of the 50 most promising companies in North America less than 24 months after launching.

Since returning from Silicon Valley, Craig has been helping aspiring, first-time, and early-stage founders validate business ideas and commercialize technologies.

Prior to being an entrepreneur, he had a 15-year track record of being a top-performing salesperson at every company he worked for. He has over 10,000 endorsements for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Sales on LinkedIn, with over 1,000 for his favourite sales topic, Lead Generation.

Craig has an Executive MBA from the University of Calgary, specializing in technology commercialization and new venture creation, and has completed level I of the Innovation Governance Program’s board training.