Ben Franklin Venture Investment Forum: Helping Entrepreneurs Conquer Their Most Common Fear

The old adage “You only get one chance to make a first impression” is just as true for entrepreneurs as it is for blind dates.

“If you bomb the first time when making a pitch to potential investors, you may not get a second opportunity when you really have a good message to tell,” says Jill Edwards, director of the Ben Franklin Venture Investment Forum (VIF). “That’s why it’s so critically important to train young entrepreneurs in the art of presenting their ideas.”

That’s where Edwards and the VIF come in. The VIF prepares leaders of young companies in the art of talking with investors. “Many fast-growth companies are started by engineers and scientists who know their technology extraordinarily well, but don’t necessarily know how to make a business out of it,” Edwards says. “Entrepreneurs need help talking about the marketing and business opportunity side. After all, that’s what investors most want to know—is it going to make money?”

The VIF trains young entrepreneurs in public speaking skills that people don’t normally learn in school—how to distill your message into compelling talking points, how to use tools like PowerPoint and how to stand up and hide the fact that your legs are shaky,” Edwards says.

Playing an Important Role in Job and Wealth Creation

The VIF, which supported by Ben Franklin Technology Partners (BFTP), began in 1986 as an all-volunteer nonprofit economic development organization in the Harrisburg area.

“The VIF started as a venue for entrepreneurs to meet with investors,” says Edwards. “At the time, there was a recognized need among young companies for equity investment, but there really wasn’t any mechanism in this area to connect potential, particularly angel, investors with companies who were looking for funding.”

By the end of the 1990s, numerous community angel groups had formed all over the place, so the “meet-and-greet” aspect of VIF’s mission became redundant. But there was still clearly a need for preparing companies in the art of the investment pitch, getting them ready to talk to investors.

Overcoming “Volunteer Fatigue”

At the same time, VIF was experiencing volunteer fatigue. In 2001, BFTP of Central and Northern PA decided to provide some funding to the VIF to enable it to hire staff and continue its work of training the leaders of young companies to make pitches to investors.

“So instead of a bimonthly breakfast meeting where investors and entrepreneurs came together, we morphed into a training organization,” says Edwards. “We’ve orchestrated a number of venture capital fairs, both on a smaller and larger basis, over the past several years. And because of the substantial funding we’ve received from BFTP since 2001, we have been able to grow and expand our service offering throughout the 32 counties served by the Central and Northern office.”

Edwards says that the money BFTP provides to early-stage technology companies certainly helps, but it’s the management advice, networking opportunities and introductions to advisors, customers and suppliers that is so important. “Without this value-add, many companies would never get off the ground,” she says. “So both BFTP and the VIF have an interest in making sure early-stage technology companies survive and grow. These companies play a critically important part in job and wealth creation, and we need them.”