Tonight was that last of the CCTO Summer Workshop Series at Wilson Sonsini. The evening started with a Q&A session with David Rodgers, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency withing the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) at the U.S. Department of Energy. I missed most of this session, only catching the tail end. The EERE will spend over $1.5 Billion dollars this year in its quest to drive more clean energy sources to market. The discussion revolved around how CCTO contestants can get involved with various EERE programs. Too bad I didn’t have a chance to catch all of it.

The topic of the night was “The Investor Presentation”. As usual, Dave Weinerth laid out the agenda for the evening. He also pointed out the looming deadlines:

• September 19 - Final Business Plans are due (≤20 pages +5 pages of appendices)
• September 28 - Dress Rehearsal for Presentations
• September 30 - Final Presentation slides due (≤10 slides + 5 Q&A slides)
• October 1-9 - Final Presentations (15 minutes + 10 minutes for Q&A)
• October 29 - Awards Ceremony (winners will be announced)

Next up was Andrew Chung of Lightspeed Venture Partners. Andrew’s presentation, “Presenting to a VC,” provided a good overview on what and how to present to investors. His presentation focused on a full investor pitch of 30-45 minutes, but many of the points were applicable to our 15 minute CCTO pitches. The key sections of an investor pitch are Mission Statement, Management Team, Market Analysis, Technology Description, Operations and Finance. Starting with your mission or vision tells the investors what you do so they won’t spend time trying to figure it out for themselves. The team description should include any advisory board and indicate key positions that need to be filled. The market section can be tailored to the audience; that is, don’t spend a lot of time describing what they already know, focus on the specifics for your company. The technology section needs to be concise but sufficient and point out key differentiators and a clear value proposition. The operations section needs to show the go-to-markets strategy as well as any sales pipeline, notable customers, and channel partners. And finally, the financials needs a solid 3-5 year plan of revenue, expenditures and funding needs. Some other pointers from Andrew are:

• Know your audience
• Be conscious of time
• Get to the point
• Simple and clear slides
• Be ready to jump around (a lot!)
• Inspire confidence
• Look them in the eye
• Coordinate team roles before you pitch

After Andrew’s presentation on how to do a presentation, we got to actually see a presentation. Zach Gentry, CEO of Adura Technologies (2006 CCTO Energy Efficiency Winner), was kind enough to give his pitch to the workshop audience. Andrew Chung and Lee Cooper (Sr. Program Manager, Emerging Technologies, PG&E) served as judges for the mock pitch. Zach gave his 15 minute pitch followed by a Q&A by Andrew and Lee. After that, Zach, Andrew and Lee served as a sort of panel fielding questions about the pitch process from the contestants. The most important piece of advice from this session: practice a lot!

So the summer workshops and business clinics are over. They have been very valuable to Nate and I. While we are certainly striving to win, being a finalist has provided enormous benefits. First of all the workshops have been a great help to better understand the business plan process, especially the workshop on sustainability which was a new topic for both of us. Second, the business clinics provided us with a great opportunity to ask seasoned professionals about key issues such as incorporation, patents, PR, and angel investors. Our CCTO appointed mentor, Ed Harley, has been instrumental in getting us to rethink the way we approach the value proposition and market segmentation. And last but not least, the CCTO has given us hard deadlines to really kick us in to gear!

Special thanks to Rex Northen, Marc Gottschalk, Mike Santullo, Jeremy Walker, Dave Weinerth and the rest of the CCTO team. Great job guys, you are a great asset to the Clean Tech industry!