Wow.. what a week. Anatomy of a Fintech Startup Competition Pitch and a Product Hunt Launch - Lessons Learned.

More of a Weekly Standup as opposed to a Daily Standup - because that week went by so fast that I didn't have the bandwidth to post daily.

Three months ago, we entered our fintech in a Wealth Management Disruption Competition sponsored by one of the six big banks here in Canada. Out of 60 companies that applied, we made the top 5, got flown to Montreal from Vancouver, met the stakeholders and the other competitors. All five of us tackling different slices of the space - AI for disaster risk predictions, teen financial literacy, financial goal tracking, end-of-life asset tracking and us, data visualization for financial planning. We each received $10K and all pitched for the top prize last week for $100K in front of bankers, fintech VCs and successful fintech founders...

... and we also launched on Product Hunt the week before and a lot of that activity spilled into last week as well. The goal was to launch before the competition and to help check the "traction" box.

Lessons learned. These competitions only return what you put into it. We had weekly mentoring seminars on various topics. We had a fintech accelerator and reps from the bank interact with us on a regular basis. But these competitions also aren't a silver bullet. Just like a budding movie star, we thought that this platform just might rocket us to fintech stardom, exposure, and that fintech leaders from around the world would discover us and beat a path to our door. Not the case yet - but time will tell. My LinkedIn had a spike, a few beta signups but otherwise, crickets. And yes, our pitch was pretty solid.

Baseball and startup pun aside, that was only the 2nd time we've officially pitched VCs. The last swing was almost a year ago after Collision in Toronto. And maybe that is the best way to think of this now - each swing is a chance to calibrate. Build up confidence - both with the swing in general and with the quality of our bat (our product). Each sprint, the bat gets better and better. Each pitch, our swing becomes more smooth. And we also just get more comfortable being at the plate in general.

It is also important to understand the rules of the game and a startup competition is not the same as a straight VC pitch or a customer value proposition. A big bank wouldn't put $150K on the line plus the time invested just for fun. In many respects - this approach was brilliant. They could have hired a team of 5-10 people, at $100K+, to go out and "build something innovative" or they could promote a competition and have some of the best and brightest ideas seek them out instead. Keep in mind though, they aren't simply looking to bubble up the best, new fintech product in the world. They are looking to find and potentially partner with a company that also benefits their company roadmap and goals. It is a fair trade-off, but know the rules going into it so that you can play the game.

Switching up analogies again. The agent finds the diamond in the rough young actor - but they also profit from their rise to stardom. But there can only be a handful of stars. The joy of the new world of the internet though is that we can also play as our own agent.

We launched on Product Hunt. A solid explainer video and product tour. We didn't partner with a Product Hunter - did it ourselves. We landed squarely in 22nd place - ended up with 173 upvotes and had more than 100 people sign up for our product from all over the world. I have demos booked with folks from Australia, Croatia, Ireland, the UK, the US and across Canada. We pushed some tweets and had some follows and re-tweets. A few more signups... some word of mouth. Even our first few paying customers.

The difference? For anyone who listens to Seth Godin (highly recommend his Akimbo podcast; it is more heady than "do this, then this, then this" but I think that is the point) he talks about simply getting your gift out there into the world instead of waiting to be chosen.

I watched for the post competition press release. For the record, we didn't win. We are waiting for feedback this week but still very proud of how we pitched and the progress made. After 3 months, hours and hours of hard work, and five minutes at the plate, we waited breathlessly for the results after the game. Would we get mentioned? Would be overshadowed by the deserving final selected company? Will anyone call?

I'm grateful for the time, and money, that was invested in us as a startup company by this competition and their sponsors. It is a wonderful footnote on our pitch decks now and lends an air of credibility because we were "chosen". SIlver. Bronze. It is nice.

But I am more grateful for the bootstrap, scrappy, grass-roots Indie ecosystem that exists out there. Tomorrow, I will have an early morning demo with a financial planner from Zagreb in Croatia that found us on Product Hunt. Maybe he will buy a license. Maybe he won't. Maybe he will tell a friend. Maybe he will find a bug or make a suggestion that strengthens our bat. But the difference is that I will be playing in my ballpark. It is my game. And while I can't guarantee the outcome, I can swing the bat as many times as I want, I can change the rules of the game on the fly.

If you made it this far, keep swinging. But maybe think more about hitting a bunch of singles instead of home runs. Bunt. Steal second. And have some fun.