Venture Forums Take Lighthearted Turn
L.A.’s flourishing technology scene has spawned a slew of venture forums, those all-day dog-and-pony shows where entrepreneurs perform for prospective investors.
Trouble is, all those hors d’oeuvres and PowerPoint presentations start to look alike after a while. How do you stand out from the crowd and attract the big sponsors and investors that are key to any successful forum?
Organizers of the Diamond Venture Forum are hoping to score by stealing a page from Regis Philbin’s playbook. They’ve created a game-show format and two-hour time limit for three new luncheon forums designed to showcase Inland Empire entrepreneurs. Two will be patterned after the popular game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” The other will be a takeoff on the old “Gong Show,” with the investor panel equipped with gongs to blast lame presenters off the stage.
It’s a lighthearted attempt to draw serious attention to high-tech start-ups in the Inland Empire, a region better known for warehousing, manufacturing and long commutes. Getting Los Angeles venture capitalists to make the drive out won’t be any easy task, admits organizer Michael Stull, executive director of the Inland Empire Small Business Development Center. But he says the compressed time frame and offbeat format have attracted some good response.
“A lot of venture forums are just boring,” Stull said. “We wanted to come up with something fun and entertaining.”
And short. Only three or four start-ups will be invited to the lunchtime events, where presenters will have just seven minutes to make their case. The first forum is scheduled for May 10 at the Hyatt Regency Suites in Palm Springs. Presenters will include OneStopBid.com, an Internet portal serving the construction industry; Universal Tracking Inc., a maker of global positioning systems; and EServer, which offers application hosting and server-based computing solutions.
Additional forums are scheduled for June 14 in Temecula and July 13 in Ontario. For more information, contact Stull at (909) 781-2345 or at mstull@iesbdc.org.
