Today is GrowLab‘s first demo day with the 5 companies from the first cohort showing to over 50 investors what they have worked on since mid August. I am incredibly proud of all of the teams – they worked very, very hard for this moment and I have no doubt that all of them will nail their pitches today.

Reflecting on the past few months with the GrowLab companies, I am reminded of a few things:

• Never ever underestimate the power of a strong and engaged network of mentors – especially as first-time entrepreneurs you can avoid an incredible amount of pitfalls if you get the right advice as the right time.
• Never ever underestimate the power of a great pitch – most entrepreneurs don’t spend enough time creating (and telling) the story of why their start-up is worthwhile investing into. A great pitch doesn’t get created over night but is the result of many, many refinements, trial pitches and feed-back loops. Don’t treat it as a side project, it is one of the most important things a CEO should focus on.
• And last but not least, never ever underestimate the power of a platform that elevates you above the noise of the ever increasing start-up activity – we have seen an explosion of the numbers of start-ups in the past couple of years and it is becoming more and more important to find ways to break through the noise and leave a mark. Accelerators with a good reputation are probably the best platform to do so these days.

Related articles

• Finding Signal In The Noise Of Demo Days (avc.com)
• What the BC technology industry really needs (wmediaventures.com)
• GrowLab announces startups of its ‘accelerator program’ (canada.com)