Technori Pitch
I’ve long admired people who know how to communicate their ideas or passions in a short and powerful pitch. I was given that opportunity at Technori, a gathering for the start-up community in Chicago. After two and a half years of hosting their monthly pitch event, Technori has gained quite a following, and in October of last year they sold out the Chase Auditorium for a unique event. It was their first pitch night focused on social enterprises. The five of us who presented represented the wide spectrum of organizations that fall into the social enterprise category, with Spark Ventures falling somewhere in the middle, having a hybrid model of nonprofit international development work, sustained through for-profit business.
I’m fairly certain that the goal of these presentations is to make it look as easy and natural as possible, but I’ll tell you that the preparation to get to that point is significant. It was great to have the support of Technori and Square Planet during my preparation, as well as the Spark Staff who helped develop the slides, recruited supporters to be in the audience and listened to my practice pitches!
I’m like most people in that I think my voice sounds weird and I’m not very excited about circulating a video with me on camera for 5 minutes. However, if you’ve never heard the Spark story and model, this short presentation will give you the highlights as well as present the opportunity to be involved in our Grow Campaign. And if you like it – feel free to share it with some friends. The more people we can get involved with Spark Ventures, the greater impact we can have lifting children out of poverty through our model of business driven philanthropy.
Thanks,
Rich Johnson
Co-founder & CEO
