Creative Idea Powerhouse

Nothing to be proud of, this is an experience sharing from my past 9 times ‘Unsuccessful’ presentations to pitch the MSC Preseed Grant. Due to my friend keep telling me there’re many people interest in applying this fund but don’t know where and how to start. It is easy to write the proposal for Preseed and you can always refer to the friendly Preseed Account Manager for helps and clarifications. However when come to preparing the presentation slide and pitching, the challenge comes. I’ve been axed out for countless times from evaluation, and also approval pitching.

I have gathered all these real experience and put into the slide below sharing of how to prepare a storyboard to present your idea. I will continue to improve the guide from time to time. For those Batch 14 applicants, best of luck once again, and I shall see any of you in the evaluation pitch soon… Cheers!

For those just get ready with your idea, Batch 15 just open and it is your time to ‘try’ your luck although I dont really believe in luck but hardworks… Cheers. Drop me email or comments to help improve this slide if you can, for those senior or approved applicants.

Early this month me and my mate went for Preseed Approval meeting and have some really challenging moment for that presentation. We went out and we have a spark inside our head. The catch we get during that presentation not only about how to tweak our idea works, but a very big light bulk inspiring us about what is truely needs for an entrepreneur personality, is about dare to fail, a quote which I think Billy used to sell well about, and follow up with the reading quote from Guy Kawasaki from Garage Technologies, dare to fail, fail hard, and learn from it.

A strike of 6 times in Evaluation pitchings (6 continue submission to preseed.. when I looked back, and this number is continue to add-on) and 2 times in Approval meeting pitching make me really think alot, and also learn alot. For those who continue to try as hard as me, I know you going to success one day, for those who don’t think that Preseed is the bowl of rice for you to raise your first startup fund, my advice is, don’t give up until you sign your first approval letter with MSC. My sincere advice, you will gain more, and more and more be a bullet proof personal, and for your company too.

My personal opinion and experience, the takeout from this exercise (sorry if I called it that way) not only about tha RM150k, but you will also learn how to sell your idea in future to the VCs (if you need to raise money from them), pitching to your potential clients and so on. If you can’t even sell to the Preseed, what confident level you have to sell to the public, or you only build your system to sell to your dad or mum’s relative companies (well I agreed even Bill Gates first go through his mum to get contacted IBM and sell his first copy of DOS….) but those day are over. The world now are more challenging than ever. Information flow faster than you brain pulse sparks, or speed of light.

Me and my mates are going in again for tomorrow evaluation pitch… and if we can get it through this time, I will be happy to share my slide here, open up my idea and the entire presentation deck to you, no hiding. And for those who are in Preseed Batch 13, good luck to all of you… hope everyone of us can catch the last ride for Y2008 approval meeting… and start to ‘Change the World’ in Y2009 to come. I love Guy Kawasaki quote.. Cheers! And for those who wondering what am I talking about, feel free to check out the Technopreneur website and catch the last batch application which going to due on 2nd Jan 2009.



Our project was finally accepted by the evaluation meeting, a big thanks for the evaluation team for their support, courage and believe in our idea . The next door keeper will be the approval committee formed by the panel from large corporations. The team members we met previously was from SMIDEC, also the MD of MDeC, and some senior members from MOSTI, TeAm and so on. Conclusion, they all are really the door keepers for the PreSeed fund. To sell the idea to them, I think the mistake I made previously was because I failed to speak in their language (a big failure for my presentation is not fast enough to understand the background of the audience, and speak at the tone of their background and culture …)

One lucky thing is that, I have been through this meeting, and have learn to able to speak at their level of understanding for technology, and to sell to them in this coming approval meeting, which the date of meeting is yet to confirm. Well, it is easy to understand as it is year end right now and most of the people are in busy schedule and it will be some how difficult to get all these senior members to be free at same time, and that’s the reason why it is more precious for us to make sure we don’t go in and waste their time … hopefully I’m not. Good luck to all the Preseed applicants~!

Me and my best buddy have submitted in total of 4 business idea proposal since mid of this year and I can said that we are pretty aggresive in hunting down for this fund to jump start our idea. We have been entering the Technopreneur Pre-Seed evaluation pitching sessions for more than four times with four differen proposals, and only one time we successfully survived through the approval committee pitching session. As result, none of the project get approved so far, but the experience is pretty interesting and fruitful.

This coming monday me and RB is going for the fifth time pitching session on Intelligent Email system. We have downgraded the solution design, upgrade the development costing, and finally, normalize it to industry or Malaysia’s standard

We have once been challenge by one of our VCs friend on the statement that ‘if your idea is so great, why can’t you dump everything in and make it works? Why wait for the 150k?’, that strike me, and deeply inside my heart, I know the answer, the ‘secret’ answer.

There will be two pitching sessions during this ‘Season’ 12th episode. After so many submission, resubmission, pitching, hope that we can finally get into the ‘action’ time and get something on the track to prepare for better Y2009.

I will open up all our four ideas ‘as if this round we continue to be boosted out from the picthing’. Stay tune… and of course, if the ideas are not open here, stay tune too on our success stories, and also be ready to sign up for our BETA … Wish us luck on this coming monday, 10th Nov 2008…

For those who are like me preparing for pitching and sharpening the saw, feel free to find out some cool stuffs at Garage Resource Center
To find out the Preseed fund, check out here