Korean startups learn to perfect their investor pitches at the ‘TIPS Global Pre-Accelerator 2021’

The fifth and second-last session of the ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’ held on August 19, prepared the 10 Korean startups for making perfect IR decks for pitching to potential investors. The session was led by Vinnie Lauria, FoundingPartner at Golden Gate Ventures, who has been an entrepreneur turned VC. Vinnie has been investing focussed on Southeast Asia startups since a decade. He covered topics like understanding valuation terms and negotiation process, creating a compelling IR Deck and contacting potential investors effectively.

The six-week program ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’,organized by Korea Business Angels Association is held from July 22 to August 26, 2021, with a combination of offline/online sessions. The program aims to prepare the 10 early-stage startups for overseas expansion, setting up countries, establishing strategies for advancement, creating IR decks, and practicing pitching in English.

Session 5 at the ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’ held on August 19.

Create compelling pitches and finding the potential investors

Vinnie Laurie, helped the participating startups prepare for the pitch session with a thorough explanation about various aspects of impressing investors. Vinnie covered importance of preparing for investors before the real situation through paying attention on drafting storylines, building relations with investors, etc. He elaborated about steps the startups need to take at various timelines like two months, three months, six months, etc before approaching the investor.

Vinnie explained about pre-emotive offers, Series A investments, choosing best partners, etc. He talked about creating compelling pitches with right structure, design, words, metrics, charts, vision, use of funds, etc. Vinnie also covered the process of negotiation and closing the deal with investors. He explained the different rounds of investment, seed, pre-seed, etc. The second part of the workshop was were the ten startups got few minutes to present their IR Deck pitches to Vinnie for feedback. He gave various advise to startups to improvise their decks with elements like vision, team information, presenting solutions in better way, defining clear goals, having clarity on target audience, etc.

The ten startups, which are participating in the ‘TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021’ are as follows:

Deepscent: The startup provides custom scented services through Fragrance On-Demand (FoD) technology. It combines customer scent preference data accumulated from FoD services with IoT smart home, olfactory environmental data, and biometric data to expand its service to (1)B2C smart home FoD service (2)B2B Fragrance as a service (FaaS) service (3)FoD sleep care service.
Deep Hearing:It has AI-based technology to make a speech, sound clear even in a noisy atmosphere. The startup provides voice enhancement solutions to manufacturing and service companies such as video conferencing platforms, mobile phone providers, and tablet PC manufacturers.
Mirint: The startup provides an allergic rhinitis treatment/prevention medical device that improves symptoms of allergic rhinitis by using low-power laser therapy (LLLT) and provides AI based customized prevention information. It is dubbed as a next-generation rhinitis treatment device that can prevent allergic rhinitis.
Weddell: The startup simplifies the access to parenting information through a single mobile platform. Currently, Weddell provides professional content and recommended products based on data and AI and plans to provide ease on parenting and every decision they make.
Alsemy: The startup is developing AI-based semiconductor device modeling EDA software, allowing fast and accurate modeling of devices by non-expert users. Alsemy’s solution dramatically reduces time from device technology development to chip fabrication, with better prediction of hardware characteristics. The first software is expected to be released in 3Q 2021.
Espreso Media:The startup provides deep learning based super-resolution services, which can restore damaged images and create higher resolution contents. Its services can be customized to use in various industries such as surveillance, media, e-learning and medical field.
Klleon:The startup has developed Deep-learning based video-generating SaaS for companies. The S/W product can generate voices, images, and videos using scarce sets of data with the few-shot learning technology.
Omolle:Omolle’s MATIV is a connected fitness service using the smart mat. Nearly 7,700 pressure sensors in the smart mat monitor the movement of the user. And then MATIV’s AI technology provides various feedback and interaction depending on the workout situation to help users work out enjoyably.
TECH: The startup deals with every ceramic electronic parts, especiallly is specializing in LTCC foundry service, manufacturing components for 5g repeater, mm-wave band antenna and module.
JONGDAL Lab:The startup makes sourcing of fashion subsidiary materials and fabrics easier. Using AI image search technology, they shorten database registration process and search/recommend items with just a picture. Customers can search more than 900,000 items on the application ‘Buja Market’.

The TIPS Global Pre-accelerator 2021 program is being held online/offline since July 22. Each workshop/lecture is of about three hours duration every week and August 26 will be the sixth and final session.

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