Company lets you 'pitch' your business for cash, investors
PHOENIX -- Have a business idea with no way to get started?
Utah-based FundingUniverse is expanding into Phoenix and claims it can help local entrepreneurs get the money and support they need to grow.
Alex Lawrence is a Partner at FundingUniverse.
His company helps businesses make direct pitches to investors through two events.
In “crowd pitch,” a business owner has four minutes to present their pitch to a crowd of people and several investors.
After the pitch, they take Q&A for three minutes from people in the crowd before receiving feedback from the panel of investors.
Everyone in the room is given “Fun Dollars.”
At the end of the night everyone invests the fake currency in the company they think has the most potential and that person wins.
Lawrence said while they don’t win real money, each participant walks away with constructive feedback and new ideas on how to improve their business plan.
“They often times get new ideas for their business, things they haven’t thought of, a comment will come in about a company that is a competitor that they weren't aware of, a lot of great resources come from a crowd like this. The crowd can help hem determine if they have a really good idea or a really bad idea.”
The winner also gets 6-months of free services to help grow their business estimated at $15,000.
This includes items like a establishing a web site, a business plan, payroll services, phone services, and accounting consulting.
Specifically, that means:
6-months of phone service from Jive Communications worth $1,500, FundingUniverse financial services package estimated at $5,000, Six months of payroll services from ADP which would normally cost about $3,000, 6 months of free rent at GangPlank that would typically cost $1,500, and 4 press releases written and submitted by NewsWire that would generally run you about $2,000.
The winner of Wednesday’s Crowd Pitch was Cary Lovins, President of CJC Enterprises.
The company makes goods focused on nutrition like bread formulated to be packed with protein and energy bars.
In the second event called “speed pitch” the stakes are higher because the businesses are pitching to a group of 25 investors for real money.
Lawrence said there is a committee in their Salt Lake City home office that pours through hundreds of applications to determine which companies will be eligible to participate in “crowd pitch” and “speed pitch”.
Lawrence hopes this will help generate new growth in a weak economy.
“We are going to be in Phoenix permanently starting next month. We are going to be doing events every month and hopefully help stimulate the economy help bring some new jobs, some new companies, kinda dig Phoenix about of a little bit of a hole.”
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