Road trip!

A Scratchpad contingent recently returned from MIT's Global Founders Skills Accelerator Demo Day. Why? To see how some of the "other guys" were doing theirs. (Seeing an event is much more valuable than reading about it.) MIT has run their program for several years and we wanted to learn from their experience. As we were there, we noted ideas we want to "borrow" and paths that we don't want to take for our Demo Day. Because, well, our accelerator is different and we believe it's critical to tailor ours to what works for our companies.

The GFSA is a student incubator; it had 14 MIT founders in this summer's accelerator. Each founder had a turn in the spotlight, taking the stage to tell the 300 or so attendees about their startups. They had been well-prepared and coached to present their company overviews. The pitches were tailored to the company’s needs, with none of them focused on investment, whereas we anticipate investment oriented pitches from the Scratchpad companies at our Demo Day.