Next Generation: High $takes

[00:00:05] Alex: It really forces us to refine and refine and refine our story and be able to tell it in, in a very crisp, coherent, concise way that also draws you.

Competitor: This is not our first competition; we've sort of evolved over a period of time.

Bilal: And each competition, I actually got better. I feel like every competition I do, I learn something.

Competitor: And I prepped for hours, like going through the deck line by line. This is exactly the language we wanna use. This is the message that we wanna get across.

Sloane: This is space that we wanna be in and we deserve to be there just as much as you know, the next team.

Richard: I can't describe pitch competition. It's like the most stressful five minutes.

Competitor: No matter how prepared you are, sometimes when you get up there, you just get nervous or anxious like I do and can trip over your words or draw a blank.

Competitor: And I guess this was actually the first step, which was such a strong step.

Kevin Long: …now our heads are like, how great would it be if we win it?

[00:01:00] HOST (Andrea): Hi, and welcome to “This is Small Business: NEXT Generation” - a miniseries brought to you by Amazon. I’m one of your hosts – Andrea Marquez.

If you’re a regular listener of This is Small Business – you know that I’m on a “learning journey” to find out what makes a small business succeed. And one important lesson I’ve learned so far is that – at some point, it takes cash. - Dinero. Moula. Scratch… It could be a loan, some angel investors, an inheritance from your grandmother… But if you’re trying to start a small business – no matter how good your idea is – if you don’t have some access to money – you might struggle getting it off the ground.

College level business pitch competitions are a popular way for young entrepreneurs to drum up seed money. There are quite a few of these opportunities available – where new entrepreneurs can present their business plans and hope to win big. But taking part in them takes a lot of energy, confidence, and hard work. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart.

So here’s the thing: one of the “largest and richest” inter-collegiate business competitions [00:02:00] in America is called THE RICE UNIVERSITY BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION. It attracts brilliant students from all over the world. Each hopeful team pitches their business plan to a room full of judges and strangers – for a chance to win the grand prize of $350K. Money is great. And it also seems like a chance for young entrepreneurs to get good at describing their own value – and dealing with competition. As business lessons go – what could be better than that?

Maybe you’ve thought about taking part in a business pitch competition or applying to a small business accelerator program. And if you’re wondering if you have what it takes, for the next 8 episodes of this miniseries you can join us and find out. We’ll be following 4 student teams behind the scenes through the Rice Business Plan Competition. You’ll hear all about their challenges, hopes, and fears as they prepare to pitch their hearts out. Along the way – I’ll talk to organizers, judges, and past participants – to find out just what it takes to win one of the most prestigious [00:03:00] business prizes around.

And I also wanted you to hear from someone with a not only a fresh perspective, a lovely voice, and business expert insights but also from someone who happens to be a past winner of the Rice Business Plan Competition. Luckily, I found all that in Mitchella Gilbert, or Mitch. I am super excited to welcome them to This is Small Business cause I don’t think I could do this without them. They are one of the first 200 Black women to raise over $1M in venture capital and the prefect candidate to co-host This is Small Business Next Generation.

Hi Mitch!

[00:03:38] MITCH: Hey, I am so excited to be here and to be serving as your co-host.

[00:03:45] ANDREA: Me too! Ok so, I need to share your awesomeness here. Others need to know why you’re the coolest. So, Mitch attended the UCLA Anderson School of Management after earning a full scholarship to build their startup, Oya Femtech Apparel. [00:04:00] They graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy. Oya Femtech Apparel is actually the fourth company Mitch has started. Oh – and just to top off this impressive background – they’re also a former elite athlete and Nike employee who is “obsessed” with women’s health and sportswear apparel. Hence the founding of Oya Femtech.

Mitch – I hope you know how excited I am to have you join me on This is Small Business: Next Generation. So, I’ll let you fill in our listeners on how important the Rice Business Plan Competition was for Oya Femtech.

[00:04:35] MITCH: The Rice Business Plan competition was something that was very pivotal for Oya. It helped us land our first investor, although we were virtual, it was during the pandemic, so it would be a slightly different experience being able to watch these teams compete in person. But again, I'm very pumped and just excited to be here and to be your co-host.

[00:04:54] ANDREA: Stap. I’m so excited for this. So for more context for our listeners, [00:05:00] the competition is being held on the Rice University Campus – in my home state of Texas. And Mitch and I are gonna’ be there in person to soak up the atmosphere, firsthand. Mitch, tell me, as a former participant – what’s the biggest thing you remember about the FEELING of taking part in the Rice Business Plan Competition?

[00:05:20] MITCH: Yeah, there's definitely a lot of pressure. I think the year that we did it, there were hundreds of teams, and again, it was covid, so there was no similar situation for us to have prepared for how we were going to compete. But we had the luxury of being coached by an amazing advisor who had also placed during the Rice Business Plan competition.

And so, we also had the amazing opportunity to meet advisors through the Rice Business Plan competition. And so it was just day in, day out, practice, practice, practice. I pitched with one of my co-founders. We learned a lot. We got a lot better. And I'm excited to see how these teams deal with the pressure because some people consider pressure fun, some people consider it nauseating. [00:06:00] In business plan competitions, a lot of times you're dealing with people and their perceptions, whether that be racism, sexism, or any other isms. And so it can be difficult to navigate that. So sometimes that's not just pressure, that's also like code switching and navigating how to thrive in a venture capital community where not many people look like you.

[00:06:27] Andrea: Since you already touched on the subject, what does it feel like to be a black woman-owned business in this space?

[00:06:33] Mitch: I think going throughout my career, it's felt different in different ways. I think even beyond just black woman owned business, we're also a consumer product and a consumer product in fashion and a consumer product in fashion specifically for women. And so that makes us this very unique type of entity to get venture capital. And so I think early on, [00:07:00] I sometimes found it very frustrating because I was trying to explain feminine health issues to venture capitalists who most of them are not women. So it was like they didn't necessarily understand.

I think though, surviving or in thriving in venture capital is a lot like dating in the sense that you should not talk to venture capitalists who do not like you. Like you shouldn't date people who don't like you, but like in your twenties, you don't really know better. And so a lot of people spend a lot of time talking to venture capitalists who are not necessarily interested in their vertical, interested in them as a leader, interested in the problems that they're solving. But I think once I learned that, navigating this space became a bit easier because I understood who were the type of people I should be talking to and like what were the results I needed to hit in order to resonate with those people.

[00:07:47] Andrea: And you were able to meet investors that you felt resonated with Oya and what you stand for in the Rice Business Plan Competition, right?

[00:07:55] Mitch: Yeah, that was interesting. So I met an Advisor. She stayed with us for over a year, [00:08:00] and added a tremendous value to Oya, tremendous value. She's still on my cap table and we got our first investor through Rice. I would also say though, with it being virtual and me not necessarily being able to meet people, also me not being as familiar with the culture of Texas, like I felt like there was somewhat of a gap between me and some of the investors that I was talking to. And it's interesting that you asked that, cuz recently I went to South by Southwest this year. And I actually got to start meeting some of the people who I met virtually during Rice. You know, once I had gone through a journey and learned more about venture capital and it was a very full circle moment because I do have a community in Texas that came through Rice. I just don't think that I was really able to build the bridges at the time because I didn't know how.

[00:08:52] Andrea: Overall do you think going through the Rice Business Plan competition as a competitor was worth it?

[00:08:57] Mitch: Yeah, and I think all businesses should go through [00:09:00] pitch competitions early on because you have to practice communicating your idea to people who don't know you and actually don't really wanna know you, you know, like critical feedback. And then I think for underrepresented founders, it's even more critical because starting a business requires some form of capital. So if you're going after venture capital specifically, pitch competitions are a great place because there are rules, you know, and there are rubrics around how you can talk to the venture capitalist. So it's almost like bumper lanes as you learn how to start building a business and communicating about that business, and then getting advisors who can then help you take that business to the next level.

[00:09:45] ANDREA: And can we talk about the PRIZE MONEY? Up to $350K is not small change – especially for a startup. What could winning that kind of money mean to business owners at this stage of their journey?

[00:10:00] MITCH: It can mean a lot of different things. What it does mean very much depends upon your plan and how long you've been working in your business, right? So like, a lot of early-stage startups, sputter, like they're testing everything. A million dollars in venture capital sounds like a big number because there's a lot of zeros, but it's actually really not that much money. Like if you think about what you can test with a million dollars, you can run that on a couple of ad campaigns and some influencers. And if you're not careful with that money, then you could find yourself in a deficit because you didn't necessarily hit the milestones that you were supposed to hit.

Conversely, if you're a really smart and scrappy founder and more than likely this is the second or third iteration of your business, so you have a better idea of like what steps you need to take to hit your milestones. That 350,000 can definitely mean a lot, but I would say it probably averages somewhere in the middle, and it's probably like your first employee [00:11:00] and maybe some ad campaigns in testing.

And I think you'll see in the competition that different founders and startups have different access to capital. So I think in my year we were competing against some European startups who had been given like grants by the government. Like some of them had been given grants between 500,000 to like a million dollars. And so I'm building this in my backyard slash business school dusty apartment with my roommate versus you've already had a chance to test out so many things because you've been given that runway and so I think it can be difficult from a judging perspective because what's $300,000 to a company that's already raised a million versus what's $300,000 to a company that doesn't have anything? Or what's 300,000 to a company that may not have anything but they have family who's gonna invest on top of that?

[00:11:55] ANDREA: To learn more about how the competition works, we reached out to Catherine Santamaria and Brad Burke – [00:12:00] they’re two of the key organizers of the Rice Business Plan Competition.

[00:12:05] Catherine Santamaria: This is the 23rd year of the Rice Business Plan Competition. It started as a smaller regional event 23 years ago, and has grown to an international, very well-funded, impactful competition that we are excited about each year and can't wait for the next 23 years.

[00:12:30] Brad Burke: This year we were pleased that we had over 450 completed applications. And from those, we have invited 42 universities to compete in person at Rice. That represents 37 different universities and six countries. The teams that we invite come to Rice University in Houston for three days of the competition that'll take place on May 11th through 13.

[00:12:52] Catherine Santamaria: Each of the startups goes through a number of pitching rounds, and from there we determine which startups advance through the competition. [00:13:00] In each round of the full pitches, the startups are in front of a group of judges, anywhere from 20 to 45 judges. Those judges hear the pitch of the startups in that flight, and then the judges rank the startups they have seen in order of best opportunity for investment or best investment potential on down to worst investment potential. The startups that score the best from their pitches and from the rankings from the judges will advance through the competition. Ultimately, the judges are looking for startups with excellent investment potential. They are choosing the startups to advance based on who they would like to invest in, where they would like to put their money if this were a business decision.

[00:13:53] Brad Burke: Rice Competition kicks off on Thursday with an elevator pitch [00:14:00] competition, so all 42 teams have 60 seconds to give their elevator pitch, but then the real rounds begin on Friday and those rounds are by industry sector. The top 15 teams advance from the first round into the semi-finals on Saturday based on the judges’ votes. And then over lunch on Saturday, the votes are tallied again, and the top seven teams advance to the final round. So the teams compete for three rounds

The Grand Prize is an investment of $350,000. The second-place team wins $100,000 investment, and the third-place team wins a $50,000 investment. In addition to those prizes for the top finalists, there are a number of other investment prizes. In total, we have over 1.5 million in prizes, [00:15:00] and there are in total about 75 different prizes available at the competition.

[00:15:24] Andrea: Wow, that’s pretty amazing. Mitch, what are some other things that you will specifically be watching for this year? Especially from the perspective of someone who has gone through this and is further down in their own business journey.

[00:15:35] Mitch: Yeah. When you invest in early-stage startups, typically you're investing in the founders. And their ability to tackle challenges. So because we were virtual and it was a different environment, I'm excited to see how these founders deal with the pressure of being on stage. Again, some people thrive, some people get nauseous. So I, I think that's important. I also am curious to see how founders are going to be tackling the current economic climate. [00:16:00] So you see startups in like clean energy or that deal with infrastructure at given Biden’s infrastructure plan doing really well, whereas some startups, like most other startups are struggling to raise capital in this environment. And so I'm curious to see their plans around that. And then lastly, I'm really interested in diversity. Like, I'm interested to see what that looks like. I think my year almost everybody who won or placed was an app. So I'd be curious to see what are the new types of ideas coming from all over the world and what are the best of the best founders look like? And hopefully they look diverse.

[00:16:45] Andrea: These are all really important things that we need to keep an eye on. I'm wondering if you have any lessons learned from competing in the Rice Business Plan Competition. Because honestly, I think that's just as -- or even more valuable than winning money.

[00:17:00] Mitch: I think Rice was a really interesting time for me because it taught me to say the words vagina. Like before Rice, I was very reticent to talk about it. And my Rice advisor made me put an actual vagina on a slide and then put tears on it. And for more context, my startup, Oya Fem Tech apparel, is essentially the Under Armor of vaginas. And so we make super technical apparel sportswear for women that fights issues like yeast infections, UTIs, boob sweat, boob rash, all the fun stuff, and this came out of my own personal struggles as an athlete dealing with reoccurring yeast infections and just being really interested in fashion and living in leggings and realizing that there were ways that we could optimize women's sportswear.

But before I even came to Rice, I would not say the word vagina. I would not talk about my experience. I would just be like, there is this numerical problem. And Rice was the first time where I got really explicit [00:18:00] and learned about problems versus solution. And as I continue my career and like work on ads, that problem solution language is really critical. For example, we ran just recently, ran a whole bunch of ads and we tested different creatives, funny comedic versus like hero energy or whatever. But the problem, solution language really resonated with potential customers because it was just simple. And that was a really big key learning that I got from the competition.

[00:18:30] Andrea: That actually just came up in one of This is Small Business's bonus episodes where I talked to vetrepreneur Matt Butler and he said that the biggest hurdle for early stage or aspiring entrepreneurs isn't money, it's actually figuring out the problem they're trying to solve and knowing how to communicate that.

[00:18:50] Mitch: Yes, and that takes testing, and money can help you do that. But there's a lot of ways that you can also do that without money, especially if you're going through these business plan competitions or you're at a university [00:19:00] and you can do surveys and all these things. But finding out what problem you want to solve and who I would add to that, who you want to solve that problem for is a very big hurdle and I think. It's something that continues to impact startups because as they scale and they wanna grow, who are the new people who they wanna solve problems for? And that's a very tricky tightrope.

[00:19:23] Andrea: Valuable insights to have going into this. OK – so there’s 42 teams competing from a variety of backgrounds and different business “verticals” or categories. There are some fascinating digital tech innovation companies and sustainability companies… the list is impressive.

[00:19:40] Mitch: Yeah, but we can't focus on all of them and so we are going to focus on four of them that have a diverse array of experiences and products and problems that they're solving. And then what that will allow our listeners or audiences to do is get more deep, and better understand stories [00:20:00] and like what does it look like to be a small business owner going through this pitch competition? And hopefully because we are selecting four companies that are diverse, our listeners will be able to find someone that they really identify with and so they'll be able to take away some lessons learned there too.

[00:20:15] ANDREA: So if you’re a small business owner listening right now – maybe you’re part of the Amazon small business seller community, or you’re one of our regular listeners – the teams we’re talking to are definitely gonna resonate with you. Coming up – we’ll hear from some of the students who are competing.

[00:20:30] HOST (Andrea): You're listening to This is Small Business Next Generation, brought to you by Amazon. I’m one of your hosts, Andrea Marquez, and along with Mitch Gilbert, we’re introducing you to the world of business plan competitions and learning about how to best pitch your business in a way that attracts investment, in the case of the Rice Business Plan Competition, teams are competing to win up to $350K towards their small business startups.

Did you know that nearly 60% of products sold in Amazon's store are from independent sellers - most of which are small and medium-sized businesses? [00:21:00] If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or an early-stage small business owner, there are many resources that Amazon offers to help you succeed and grow. One of those resources is the Amazon Small Business Academy where you can find the help you need to take your small business from concept to launch and beyond. You can strengthen your skills at no cost with live and on demand trainings, Q&As, events, and even find more This is Small Business content. If you don’t know where to start, you can take the free self-assessment on the Amazon Small Business Academy site at www.smallbusiness.amazon.

[00:21:40] ANDREA: Ok Mitch, so let’s pretend I’m a judge at the Rice Business Plan Competition – how would you describe OYA to me?

[00:21:48] MITCH: Yeah, so Oya is the under arm of vaginas. We make patent pending sportswear that fights all the fun, feminine health issues like yeast infections, UTIs, material vaginosis, and boob rash. [00:22:00] Women are fighting issues like yeast infections, UTIs, bacterial vaginosis, that our sportswear is making worse. And if you think about it, it makes sense because women's sportswear doesn't breathe and it doesn't absorb moisture, which is problematic because women leak, meaning that the sportswear that we're wearing is kind of like a garbage bag and then if you keep adding to that, what happens with a garbage bag when you leave it in your kitchen when it's hot? All sorts of bad things, but for women athletes or women who wear sportswear, it's even worse because like a garbage bag, then we get sweaty. It's leading to all these different bacteria, it's throwing off our ecosystem, and no one likes unhappy vaginas, and so Oya is putting a stop to that with very cute, amazing sportswear. We've sold out two collections already this year. We are going into extended sizing and it's just been a really wild journey and we are excited to support feminine health.

[00:23:00] ANDREA: So, you’ve been practicing this pitch for a while. What did it take for you to get to the point of being able to “pitch” your business smoothly?

[00:23:08] MITCH: It's practice. It's a lot of practice, and I think being an underrepresented founder, it's not just practice, because if you're an underrepresented founder, what that means is sometimes you get shut out of rooms where people don't want to hear from people like you. Whether that be because they do not have people in their network that look like you, whether they don't typically invest in problems that you are solving like feminine health or FinTech, like Oya, so for me specifically, I had to get practice learning how to talk to someone who saw over my head. When Oya’s in a pitch competition, it always goes into overtime because the woman's always arguing until she's blue in the face because she gets it. She understands what a yeast infection is, and I'm talking to her face to face. But men, a lot of times, [00:24:00] whether they don't understand the severity of these issues or they don't understand why it's important, what I've learned is that I need to talk to them through the language of sports. So Oya has done really well with male athletes, because they understand what it's like to have sweaty crotches. And how uncomfortable that can be and how that can inhibit their performance. And so that was something that I had to learn through practice and talking to advisors who were very explicit so that way I could talk to investors who were seeing over me and then bring them down to a level where we could talk face to face.

[00:24:35] Andrea: So that means that you have to tailor your pitch depending on who you’re pitching to -- to make sure that they fully understand the problem that you're trying to solve, even if it doesn't affect them directly.

[00:24:46] Mitch: Yeah. And so it's interesting like as we see these startups who are gonna compete, it'll be interesting to see how much customer education is gonna play into their journey. [00:25:00] So earlier you were talking about how, uh, the first question that startups have to answer is, what is the problem that they wanna fight? And then who is the problem that they wanna fight for? And back to that money question around like $360,000. If your product requires a lot of education, then how are you strategic around who you're going to touch first? Right. Like who requires the least education? And Oya is an interesting case point because women athletes, some of them are wearing four pairs of spandex when they get their period because they have to wear white. And so they don't wanna be embarrassed on television. So they're very aware that they're getting yeast infections on all sorts of negative health complications from their sportswear, but they don't have other options, so they're not sure what to do about it. So for Oya, that may be a lower hanging fruit customer because she's more aware of the problem and it will be less expensive to convert her. Versus a customer who once she learns of the solution, [00:26:00] it makes sense to her. But that may require like 10, 15 touch points to get her up to speed on how her body's doing and how she can improve how her body functions with sportswear. And so as we look at our four businesses and go deep, I'm very curious to see how they wanna tackle customer acquisition and customer education.

[00:26:22] Andrea: Speaking of how our startups will be tackling customer education, let’s meet our four teams. And in no particular order, let’s start with Outmore Living.

[00:26:32] Kevin Long: I'm Kevin Long, co-founder and CEO of Outmore Living, um, Outmore we are re-imagining the future of your outdoor spaces. So our first product line, which launches this September, is battery powered, heated outdoor furniture. It’s patent pending and our hope is that by launching this product we can enable year-round comfort with people's outdoor living spaces for the first time. We think our product line is going to completely revolutionize the outdoor space. And from there we hope to build an ecosystem of products that do just that.

[00:27:00] HOST (Andrea): Kevin's co-founder is Alex Duncan, he's the COO of Outmore living. And here's what Alex says they plan to do with the money that they might win.

[00:27:10] Alex Duncan: I mean, other than a, a very nice dinner that night. You know, you have like combinatorial explosion of the number of paths that can happen out of something like winning the Rice competition. The number of things and doors that it could open both for us from a actual, like accelerating the business, accelerating the roadmap, funding perspective to who do we get introduced to as an investor? Who can we get introduced to that's able to open more doors for us? It's, it's hard to predict, but I know they're all going in the same direction with it which is exceedingly positive.

[00:27:40] Sloane: I'm Sloan Tilley. I'm the CEO and co-founder of, Dia. Dia is aiming to revolutionize the healthcare industry by bringing at home clinical grade lab testing right to the patient's home. We transform healthcare testing by using saliva instead of blood. And enable patients to truly have biomarkers tested on a daily frequency to inform better healthcare decisions [00:28:00] and improve healthcare access.

[00:28:04] HOST (Andrea): Julio Fredin is Sloane's co-founder. He's a Ph.D. candidate at Tecnologico de Monterrey and Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. He's also the CSO of Dia. And Dia also has a third co-founder: Fernando Webb, the CTO. Okay, now that you're filled in on what Dia does, let's hear what they'll be doing with the money that they might win from Rice.

[00:28:25] Sloane: We would probably really try to bring on a second scientist to help Julio accelerate rate of development. And then, just building out our lab space, so paying for the time at CUNY on those really expensive instruments. And then, some of the best materials so trying out different deposition techniques as far as different coatings for electrodes.

[00:28:46] Bilal: My name is Bilal Issifou, founder of Unchained, Inc. We are a turnkey solution that removes the bounds of geography through our technology and helps companies increase brands through our ambassadors. Unchained Inc. Is a future of work solution that combines the power of people and technology [00:29:00] to help corporations strategically engage diverse talent. There's been millions of corporations investing in diverse early talent recruitment processes. Although there have been a lot of investment in this area, engagement and retention amongst that talent has still been relatively stagnant. This reason is because career services historically doesn't really know how to engage students at a high level. In order for your company to stand out, you have to actually either invest in development, invest in engagement, or partner with a company that can grow your brand to the the student side. And so that's what our solution helps companies do through our technology and through our ambassador program.

This year is all about scaling what we learned the past, uh, three years and going to market, you know, real strong this time because we grew organically through Gurilla Marketing and just our style, but this year we want to gain the funding to pair it with actual, you know, official marketing budgets, high scale, marketing campaigns, and continue to just grow the brand.

[00:30:00] Shiv: We are Active Surfaces and I'm Shiv, and we are a thin film, solar technology spinning out of M-I-T. So the idea behind active services is that solar has had the same form factor, so it's been the same shape, the same weight, uh, the same kind of design and like the way you implement it in the field for almost 50 years. So there has to be a better way with all the technology innovations, with all the material innovations, how can we make solar anywhere? And that's what we're trying to do.

[00:30:30] HOST (Andrea): Shiv's co-founder is Richard Swartwout, he's the CTO of Active Surfaces and he's also the one that's been working on the technology behind their product for -- in Shiv's words -- forever.

[00:30:42] Shiv: The more I think about the competition, the more I realize it's less about whatever place we get and more about the journey of figuring out our business plan and the process, talking to the mentors that we're gonna get connected with, getting the feedback from everyone and improving our goal. And at the end of the day, like bringing this thing to the world. [00:31:00] Like that's why we're here, that's why we're even doing a business. So winning to me is getting the connections, getting the advice, getting the mentorship to actually make Active Surfaces successful. And if we could do that, then that's a win.

[00:31:12] ANDREA (to Mitch): OOOOO this is good. Mitch? Thoughts? Thoughts?

[00:31:17] MITCH: Yeah, no, this is really exciting. That's a variety of problems. I think deep tech, health, [00:34:00] community and recruiting. I'm excited to see how all of these founders are going to talk about their businesses and also how they grow and evolve throughout the competition, and hopefully everyone leaves in a stronger place with some money. So I'm excited to hear more about these businesses.

[00:31:42] ANDREA: So I was curious about how applications were evaluated and spoke to Brad Burke, one of the competition organizers.

[00:31:50] BRAD BURKE: When we’re evaluating the applications, we look at several factors. One is we want to make sure that the company is addressing a big problem that’s easy to understand. Second is that there will be customers that will be willing to pay for their solution. [00:32:00] Third is that they have a solution that’s better than competition and fourth, that this competitive advantage would be sustainable. That their differentiation would exist for a long time. And lastly, we look at the team. And we want a strong team with a strong background that can successfully launch this company and make it successful.

[00:32:20] ANDREA: Those are clear, strong, differentiating points. I can’t wait to see where these 4 teams we’re following will go in terms of streamlining – and really PITCHING their business plans in detail. Because remember, they might all win a little something, or none of them might. Who knows.

[00:32:40] MITCH: Yeah, because it's one thing to practice pitching a business or write down amongst yourselves. It's another thing to do that on a stage in front of a field of judges who are looking for reasons to eliminate you. And then again, if you're an underrepresented founder against a backdrop of judges where people are looking to not listen to you. [00:33:00] And it's interesting because pitching, it's a skill and it's not just talking about your business. Like a good pitch should make people feel invigorated. It should feel like a music concert. So it's, it'll be cool to see not only how they streamline, but also how they bring the energy.

[00:33:17] HOST (Andrea): The fun, drama and valuable learnings are just getting started. On our next episode, we’ll be getting close and personal with two of our teams so make sure to subscribe and follow us on This is Small Business Next Generation, to see how the different teams we follow perform as the pressure mounts.

[00:33:34] MITCH: It's gonna be tough. There's gonna be a lot of teams. But I think there's also hope. Like if you can bring the energy and you can explain what you wanna do and really walk someone through how you can make a lot of money, I'm sure you'll find a lot of fans. So I'm excited to see this competition.

[00:33:50] HOST (Andrea): And if you’re a regular This is Small Business listeners, you know I like to end each episode with key takeaways. So with the help of Mitch, here are some valuable lessons we learned today:

• MITCH: One. Understand what problem you're solving and get as explicit as you possibly can, and about who the problem you're solving is for and how big that problem is. So, Market sizing is a very difficult process, but our students have the advantage of being connected to universities where you can go to librarians to help you with that. And so I think that's very important that our students do the homework on that to make sure that they're as well prepared as possible.
• ANDREA: Two. Have a plan. Yes, money is great! But if you don’t know exactly what you’ll do with it, it might not impact your business in a way that sets it up for the next stage of growth. So within all of your pitch preparation, also make sure you know what you’ll do if you win.
• MITCH: Three. Get an advisor. Rice is such a competitive journey and you get feedback every single round and it's intense. It's fast turnarounds like you may get pages of feedback and then expect to make updates and be ready by the next day. [00:35:00] And so it's very important that you're looking for advisors to help you out through this journey.
• ANDREA: and then the final lesson here, which I think is a super important and Mitch says it so well:
• MITCH: Practice. Practice, practice, practice, practice by yourself, practice with other people, and also practice with energy behind you that makes you feel like you're gonna win. I think sometimes with this pressure, again, people going on stage, sometimes people or founders are looking to the left and the right of them and getting freaked out by the competition and feeling like they can't do it. And I really want our founders to really believe wholeheartedly that they can do it. And I think when you have that feeling and you're not as focused on envy or competition, that that really enables you to shine and to tell your story. And so those are four points that I would hope our founders keep in mind.

[00:35:52] HOST (Andrea): We’d love to hear your stories wherever you are in your journey. Whether you're about to start your own business, in the process of it, or maybe even developing a new product for your already established business. [00:36:00] Reach out to us at thisissmallbusiness@amazon.com to tell us what you're up to. Or let me know what you think of the episode by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts – it’s easier if you do it through your phone. And if you liked what you heard -- I hope you'll share us with anyone else who needs to hear this!

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, and I hope you are if you’re listening to This is Small Business. Or maybe you already have your small business up and running and you’re ready for the next step. A super valuable resource that can help you is the Amazon Small Business Academy where you can find the help you need to take your small business from concept to launch and beyond. Take the free self-assessment on the Amazon Small Business Academy site at www.smallbusiness.amazon.

This is Small Business: Next Generation is brought to you by Amazon with technical and story production by JAR Audio. I’m one of your hosts, Andrea Marquez -

[00:36:50] MITCH: And I'm the co-host Mitch Gilbert.

[00:36:54] Andrea: I’m glad you’re gonna be here with me Mitch – to help me make sense of all this as the competition heats up. [00:37:00] We’ve got a road trip to Texas ahead of us… what do you think of some BBQ?

[00:37:05] Mitch: I don't really eat red meat, so we're gonna see how that works out. But I'm here for the enthusiasm and free mocktails.

[00:37:15] Andrea: And TexMex? Maybe TexMex? Some Tortillas? Tacos?

Mitch: I love tacos, man. I love me some good tacos.

Andrea: Then Tacos it is! I'm excited to have you here in Houston with me.

Mitch: Yay. [00:37:32]