As a reward for receiving the grand prize at “Mirai 2017” in February, I was able to attend “NEST2017” to make a presentation about AGRIBUDDY.
http://nest.jane.or.jp/pitchevent/
AGRIBUDDY received many valuations from judges for both “Nikkei Fintech” last year and “Mirai2017”, but this time a variety of other unique startups, a total 11 companies were selected to participate in this event, all receiving recommendation from organizers of pitch events around Japan had their presentation ready. It was very exciting to be able to listen to the presentation of such selected people because they were the ones who represent the startup scene in Japan.
From my experience of the three occasions of presentation I gave in front of an audience, I knew that I received a good valuation from the people in Japan. But AGRIBUDDY’s business does not operate in Japan and for us to move toward the next step, we had to be ready to give presentations at events or to foreign investors outside of Japan. In order to do so, “A presentation that grasps the hearts of non-Japanese audiences in English” was inevitable.
From that point of view, since more than half of the judges at “NEST2017” were non-Japanese, I thought that it is a perfect opportunity towards the next step, I decided to send Mr. Rajesh to give a presentation instead of myself, he is an ally and a native English speaker.
I met Mr. Rajesh back in 2015, when I encountered a chance to speak with an investor in San Francisco. I needed someone who was able to give a presentation in English and he was introduced to me by an agent looking for candidates. In many occasions, I would give presentations about my business in English but was feeling frustrated because I was not able to communicate my thoughts completely. I remember clearly when Mr. Rajesh gave a flowing presentation about our business and my thoughts on it the following day after I had explained the business to him in detail.
Since I decided to send Mr. Rajesh for the presentation, I made him responsible for building the story concept and the creation of the presentation slides. If he was able to deliver results from this event, it will mean that we (or him) were born under a strong star. A Japanese giving a presentation at an international meeting is a difficult decision, but Indians are known to talk a lot, we only have five minutes for this presentation. Under these limited conditions, he made a presentation slide and we sent it to Mr. Higashi of JRI who was going to be on stage with us as an introducer, he advised us to add detailed business models into the presentation. So, I told Mr. Rajesh about the given advice and we ended up making major changes to the presentation. It was great to receive advice from a third party instead of myself.
Rehearsals the day before the event.
We give our presentations in front of the advisors at the actual pitch, Mr. Rajesh, who cares about the limited time he has speaks to fast and stutters, fast forwards the slide and the content of his words and the sides didn’t match, leaving anxiety towards the event. He was given advise to delete letters from the slide to make it simple looking with bigger letters, so it seems that he had made further improvements on the presentation slides.
The day of the event.
Mr. Kurahashi, who is now a board member of AGRIBUDDY and Mr. Shiba who joined us as an accountant visited us at the event at Hotel New Otani. When I am the one on stage, I do not care much and feel relaxed. But this time I had a unique sense as other speakers gave their presentations. I wonder how my “Expectation for the first step to the next development” will pan out.
It was a wonderful presentation. Very easy-to-hear English with rhythm and passion, passed on the significance of the project. Mr. Rajesh worked as I expected, so we just wait for the judges’ evaluation.
Now the results.
We were told that there were two winners, the first company announced was “Pocket-Marche”, a company that I didn’t think that was the most powerful competitor. If so, is the other winner the powerful competitor that I had thought about or is it us? another company either outright or its competitor? I felt sweat in my hands as we waited for the announcement of the other winner.
Mr. Rajesh who is a foreigner with zero Japanese language skills giving a presentation in English at an event organized by a Japanese company and with an audience where more than half of the judges are non-Japanese, explaining about a business model which was founded by me (he is not the founder) , we still received great evaluation. This is definitely a big first step towards the next step for us.
The following day was Mr. Kato’s birthday, who is a partner who has supported AGRIBUDDY’s business ever since the stage of initial concept creation. He has also written an article about this event.
http://katou.jp/?eid=585
Thank you for giving us this occasion, Mr. Higashi of JRI, the continuous support we received from Mr. Kagimasa, Mr. Kurahashi who made efforts to give Mr. Rajesh a great time in Japan (this was his first trip to Japan), to all those who joined us for dinner, thank you again. I understand that the evaluation we have received is expectation for our future, so I will do my best to make it happen. I look forward to your continued support.