Last week I was pitching Cyacomb to an audience of hundreds of government officials, politicians and investors at the GovTech Summit in Paris.  Over a hundred companies from around the world applied to get stage time in front of that audience, and only 9 were selected based on a short pitch video in our application.  The pitch was competitive, and I’m delighted to say that we won!

I say “we” won because I may have been the person on stage, but the pitch was a team effort.  The language I use, the traction I describe, the visuals, all of these are a combined effort from my team at Cyacomb and those that support us.

Those that support us most emphatically includes the team at Informatics Ventures (which produces EIE).  I was pitching against people from the London, Germany, France, Israel – and I’m pretty sure not one of them had received the level of pitching training, support and coaching I have received through the EIE preparation program.

Back in 2016 I wrote about my preparations for EIE in the very early days of pitching Cyacomb, the business I now lead.  I’ve written about the impact of EIE on our funding and the support we received for the process – and one of my personal quirks about always starting with my name (which was remarked upon in Paris too).

It’s application season for EIE again (until 24^th Nov – then you’re too late) and for anyone thinking of applying I’d really encourage you to go for it.  EIE is a great event, and the skills and experience you gain doing it are utterly invaluable.

Last week I found myself walking out onto a big stage to pitch feeling confident and well prepared and winning a global pitch competition – all thanks to EIE.

Ever since launching Cyacomb, people asked me “so how is it being a CEO?” or “is it very different from what you expected?”, and I’ve found it a very difficult question to answer.

I have spent much of my career in and around start-ups, and the last 8 years as a consultant working closely with CEOs.  I have pitched, strategised, planned, sold, hired, fired, set up processes and seen many successes, and failures.  I’m still doing all those things – so how is it different?

Now I’ve been running Cyacomb for just over two years, I found myself reflecting on this on a long flight, and I started writing down my thoughts more to order them than anything else. I thought they might be of interest as a blog post, so here goes…

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I’m fascinated by what is happening with the introduction of GDPR.  Much of what I see posted on the internet seem to imply GDPR is a huge change, although perhaps this is because most of the content is generated by people trying to sell products or services to “ease the GDPR pain”.  This is a little at odds with the messaging from the Information Commissioner, which is that GDPR is simply the “next step” and that most companies that already have good Data Protection Act controls and processes in place will not see much  change.

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With EIE 17 drawing close and our preparations to exhibit well under way, I was reminded of something a few people asked me about when I was preparing a 6 minute pitch last year.

Then, I walked on stage and opened my presentation with the line “Hello, I’m Ian Stevenson from Cyacomb”.

The question I got a couple of times was “why are you repeating that – the host will just have said it?”

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I was delighted when I walked into the Copper Box Arena on Tuesday morning to find the huge “Scottish Pavilion” banner was in a great spot right on the main thoroughfare.

The day started fairly slowly, more so than on Monday, but as was the case last year it proved very worthwhile.  At Cyacomb we had one meeting arranged through CrunchMatch which was with a Corporate VC with an interest in our technology.  We have at least half a dozen investors to follow up with from the visitors to our stand (some for the next round, some for later stage) and we met at least a dozen more where there clearly wasn’t going to be a fit – but might have been for another company.

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Here are some quick thoughts from Day 1 of TechCrunch Disrupt in London.
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Just under a year ago I blogged about going to TechCrunch Disrupt with Cyacomb, and finished by saying “I hope to be back here again next year with the same company at a later stage of development” – well, the company certainly has developed, and I am going back.  I also asked “Why not a Scotland pavilion next year?” and although I have been very busy with Cyacomb, that is happening too.  There will be five of us in this first Scottish Pavilion, which I hope will continue to grow in future years.  Thanks to everyone who has helped put this together!

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So it’s been a week of good news for Cyacomb, Edinburgh and Scotland, and I thought I would share some of the highlights.

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This post on TechCrunch is a couple of years old, but I came across it while preparing for TechCrunch Disrupt (in London in a couple of weeks) and I enjoyed it so I thought I would share:

Sneaky Questions Early-Stage VCs Ask Founders

In my last post I wrote about how Start Global prepared us for TechCrunch Disrupt in London, which was the starting point of our fundraising campaign. Not long after we got back from that, we were delighted to learn that we had secured a place at EIE16.

EIE is easily Scotland’s biggest and best investor event, and frankly in terms of organisation and slick professionalism it even outdid TechCrunch Disrupt in London.  A benefit of being involved in EIE is the training process offered in advance, which brings a truly top-notch team of people together to help you refine your pitch and prepare to present to the best of your ability.  I have previously blogged about what we put into the preparations for EIE.

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