How to Win a Start-up Competition

Investors reveal what grabs their attention–and what makes them cringe. For a certain kind of tech start-up founder, the pitch contest offers a thrill that few other events can deliver: You have only a few terror-filled minutes to successfully demo your product (using shaky wi-fi, no less) in front of a firing line of judges who can—and will—find holes in your idea big enough to drive a truck through. I’ve spent the last two days camped out at this year’s Launch Festival , a tech start-up competition in San Francisco founded by entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis, where more than 40 start-ups competed for more than $1 million in prizes and seed capital.

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How to Win a Start-up Competition