EIC Accelerator: 5 essential tips for your Video Pitch
We highly recommend you have a look at our Evolution EIC Academy video series for more professional tips and information!
As you may know, one of the main new features of the new 2021 EIC Accelerator Programme will be a first screening process in which applicants will have to prepare a three minutes video about their project.
We know it may be hard to plan this crucial challenge. For that reason, we want to share with you a list of five tips you should follow to succeed in this first step boosting your initiative. Are you ready to take notes? We are about to start!
1. Be clear.
While your proposal or business plan may be full of references to OPEX, CAPEX, and OEMs, your language should be clear and succinct in your video, free of the business and technical jargon.
Provide a simple, general overview of what your innovation does and what its use case looks like. It should be easy to understand for anyone. As a bonus, this is a good exercise for brushing up your elevator pitch or a promotional video down the line.
2. Show, not just tell.
Video is a visual medium, offering you a chance to show off your innovation.
Take the opportunity to film production processes, factories and hardware or show your product platform to illustrate essential functions of your innovation. This goes a long way to demonstrate your Technology Readiness Level (TRL) milestones.
Guide your viewers through a first-time user experience and highlight the most standout features. Make them go wow, but don’t overwhelm them with details. Try to reach the “Aha” moment in 30 seconds or less.
3. Be value-driven.
Drive home the value that your innovation will bring to your customers and think broadly about how it will impact long-term. Your innovation’s ability to achieve broader societal, economic, environmental or climate impacts is a major EIC evaluation criterion.
For example, long-term DNA storage may help treat a person for a disease that presents in the future. But beyond the value to the individual, the innovation brings greater understanding to the information processes underlying life, potentially moving toward the virtual elimination of diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and diabetes that expand human potential. Say that part too.
4. Speak directly to your audience.
The EIC has made it clear that they do not want a commercial for the company. So while it may seem to be a good idea to reuse a previous promotional video for the short application, we recommend resisting this urge. Instead, focus your message on the criteria the jury is looking for: team, motivation, and impact.
You should also try to speak specifically about your need for the financial support of the EIC Accelerator.
5. Why you, why now?
What motivated you to develop your innovation? You must grab the investor’s attention at the beginning. Describe the market problem beginning with the largest issue (high deaths, high costs, environmentally unfriendly, low KPIs). Use metrics that anyone can understand and put in perspective information that isn’t easy to visualise.
Strive to create empathy with the audience. This is best done with a story: your own, a patient’s, something from the news, or even a made-up story, back up the story with stats showing that the issue is worth lots of money and that current solutions aren’t cutting it. Create a sense of urgency to solve this problem.
Don’t forget to answer why you are the right people to grow the company. Mention previous successes that will create trust in your team and plans for any hires to shore up any potential weaknesses.
Ready to begin? Let us help you! Our expert team will work with you through the screening process to make your application succeed.