Hatchery: that's my playground

A monthly money event in New York City matches dot-com dreamers with
venture capitalists. The catch is would-be entrepreneurs have only five
minutes to seal the deal.

For anybody who's ever thought they could come up with the next
Yahoo or Google, that was the easy part. All you need to do now is come
up with a couple of million dollars.

Enter The Hatchery. It's a monthly money event in New
York City that matches dot-com dreamers with venture capitalists.
There's one tonight featuring a panel of female VC's and some other
experts. The catch is, would-be entrepreneurs only have five minutes to
seal the deal.
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how do you get someone to pull out their checkbook?

Josh Grottstein: Tell me about the market. What is your unique solution and why should I believe that you're uniquely capable of doing this?

Venture capitalist Josh Grottstein sees as many as 1,000 plans a year, but only ends up funding five or six.

VCs have a one-track mind. What they want to hear isn't so much
about the product, it's about how to get around the obstacles,
marketing, competition.

Grottstein: One of the
biggest concerns you have is when someone says there is no competition,
or we're not worried about the competition. Because that tends to
signal that they're not that savvy in terms of starting a business.

Yidrienne Lai gives big money to companies in later stages of development. She says an experienced management team is key.

Yidrienne Lai: You know you'd
much rather invest in an A+ management team with a B business then
something the other way round. You know, sort of an A business with a
B+ management team.

Even if you have the dream team and the dream five-minute pitch, what are your chances of getting a check?

Jason Olim: No chance.

Jason Olim is an early Internet entrepreneur who's been on both sides of the pitch.

Olim: Probably takes 60 to 90
days before a company gets bankrolled. But that five-minute pitch is .
. . can be how the introduction is made in the first place.

And that introduction is critical. Because after the bubble burst in
the '90s, venture capital investment went from a hundred billion a year
to a fraction of that. It's slowly coming back. The National
Association of Venture Capitalists says last year VCs gave $26 billion
to young companies. That's almost half as much as Bill Gates is worth.

Olim: It's definitely getting easier now.

But to the person pitching, that's not how it feels.

Seth Gilmore:

Seth Gilmore: I definitely
don't think that timer was five minutes though. I think it was much
shorter then that, because I timed myself in the bathroom and it was
always like four minutes and 30 seconds.

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