Entrepreneuers make a pitch during local Google Start-Up

When trying to sell an idea or product, it's all in the presentation.

At least that's what successful entrepreneur Glenn Campbell, co-founder of LIDS, said.

"People buy into you. They don't necessarily have to buy into your concept. Later, your concept's important, but they buy into who's pitching it," he said. "If you look competent, if you can be a leader, convince them, have conviction with what you're doing, you can get it done."

Campbell is one of the four judges of the first Cape Girardeau Google Start-Up at Codefi this weekend.

The Google-sponsored, weekend-long business startup began Friday evening with dinner, two speakers and 14 one-minute pitches about various ideas from prospective entprepreneuers.

Of those, five ideas were chosen. The people with these ideas and other attendees formed their own groups, and innovative ideas began to take shape.

Jakob Pallesen was one of the participants whose idea was chosen, and he was "happily surprised" it was picked.

"It's a social platform focused on runners, exercise, and basically figuring out how to connect them with other people who enjoy exercise," Pallesen said, explaining his idea.

"You don't want to get your expectations up too high," he said of the competition, "because I had no idea if people would laugh, say 'That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard,' or there could be a million other fantastic ideas, but yeah, I was surprised.'"

Dr. James Stapleton, co-founder of Codefi and one of the coordinators of the event, said the 54-hour event that ends at 9 p.m. today is essentially a pitch competition that includes participation by people with ideas and people who have the skills to turn the ideas into prototypes and a successful business model.

"[First they have to] really validate whether the customers you think have the problem that you're trying to solve," Stapleton said. "... So once you kind of validate 'Yes, people actually have this problem,' then you can think about software or whatever. But before you really know how to design the software, you have to know what problems you're trying to solve."

After confirming the worthiness of their idea, participants will begin developing it and create necessary websites or apps.

At 5 p.m. today, the five groups will pitch a five-minute presentation of the final product.

The top three winners receive $3,000 worth of services from Codefi, support from local entrepreneurs and the chance to pitch to the 1ST50K startup competition committee in June.

"It is daunting; it is kind of frightening in a way," Pallesen said of the competition. "... We really wanted to try this and succeed, but it's actually OK if by Sunday we didn't start a business. ... Most ideas are not that great at the beginning, and it takes a long time to pivot that idea to where it meets a real demand, a real need, and solves a problem for someone.

"So whether or not we end up with a fully launched product, to me it's OK either way. It is a competition, but it's not really. It's more of a personal challenge that I will feel really, really good about either way. It's more about the process than the outcome," he said.

smaue@semissourain.com

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