If you don’t have 3-4 months to spend, or you feel you’re ready to pitch investors now, 47Pitches is a great option. You don’t have to relocate, spend money, or give away a lot of equity. Accelerators are often hard to get into and involve intense prescreening. With 47Pitches, the contest IS the screening process. We help you engage and impress the investors as to the merits of your project, so pitch contests can offer a cheaper, faster, and more inclusive process for getting funded.

Yes, you can do both. Accelerators are great if you need more mentoring—and some will give you initial funding to help you get started. You can start with one of our pitch contests to validate your project before applying to an accelerator. You can also apply after you’ve completed an accelerator program if you still need to connect with investors in order to raise capital or get market validation.

Investors gain insights from the combined wisdom and feedback of the other community members. Investing in startups is challenging, though rewarding, even for top venture capitalists. Our process renders consensus verdicts and discussion from large pools of incentivized investors and industry insiders, so each investor can benefit from the insights of the others. Once a Pitch contest is completed, investors can negotiate investment directly with the winning startups or join other investors as part of a group syndicate. The bigger the investor pool, the stronger the consensus value when choosing which projects to invest in.

Pitch contests are expected to last approximately two weeks once investors and startups are fully onboarded.

• Startups: Startups are not required to pay a cash fee and instead make a small equity assignment to the platform and investing pool (see below). Optional premium features are available to help startups better manage their presentation.
• Investors: Investors are charged participation fees that vary from contest to contest. These support our platform and help insure the quality of the investor pools. Currently, investors can participate in their first 47Pitches contest at no cost, thereafter they will be invited to participate under one of our subscription plans.
• Industry insiders: Insiders can participate by invitation only, at no charge.

Industry insiders create their own consensus ranking of the project contestants. While the Investor consensus reflects the collective judgment of the investors about the fundability and potential appreciation of the projects, the Insider consensus is more oriented towards market acceptance and the feasibility of the project applications.

Investors can use consensus feedback from both groups to help make better informed investment decisions. Startups get valuable feedback and mentorship from the industry insiders about their products and other issues in their target spaces. The insiders themselves can earn SAFE awards, connect with future disrupters in their industry, and get ongoing progress reports from each project.

While obviously there are no guarantees, if you win top ranking in one of our pitch contests it reflects the combined judgment of the investor and insider judges. That creates a unique metric that can help increase your recognition with investors and/or the market your project addresses. Even if you don’t get a high ranking, you can establish relationships and get valuable feedback from the judges about your project.

Startups can apply for as many contests as they like, but can only participate in one at a time. If your project doesn’t rank highly, you can still form a mentor group or negotiate funding with the investors who did rank you. The feedback you receive can also be invaluable and prepare you to rank higher in the next contest you enter.

Investors can also reapply, but we limit both the number of startups and investors per contests to about 50 in most cases.

No. If you don’t rank in the top 3 projects in any contest, your investor SAFE commitment is void. Your Platform SAFE is not refundable, but will be applied to future contests. So, there’s no additional equity or cash cost to apply for future contests. Our goal is to help you connect with the right investors and mentors to make your project a success.

Each project assigns 1-3% of its future equity to the voting pool, depending on the contest. Concept stage contests usually require more equity, while later stage or sector-specific contests usually require less. If you don’t rank within the top 3 consensus winners, your investor SAFE is voided and there’s no assessment. The Platform SAFE—typically 0.5%—is not refundable and goes to compensate 47Pitches for the use of its platform and for access to our investor communities.

It depends on the contest. Most contests provide for a SAFE pool for both investors and industry insiders. If your position doesn’t allow you to accept outside compensation and the startups you rank win the consensus vote, you can opt out of the award. While investor SAFE rewards typically include future investment rights, industry insider SAFEs do not.

Not at this time. We may in the future provide for a guaranteed minimum investment in the consensus winning projects. Winning the consensus rankings can increase your chances of accessing funding and/or negotiating better terms, but that’s a function of the investor pool’s interest in your project and other factors outside of our control.

Contests end with the consensus rankings for the projects with the most votes from each of the investor and industry insider judges. Once the awards have been rendered, the equity SAFEs are distributed pro-rata to the winning consensus voters. At that point, the investors can also negotiate additional investment in any of the projects—whether they’ve received top aggregate ranking or not.

After the contest, startups can retain their profile on our site for a small monthly fee. The first 60 days are free. They can post updates on their milestones and other events; investors can elect to receive those updates. Investors and projects can also continue to dialogue via the startups’ message boards and can negotiate funding at any time.

• Connect and build relationships with top investors quickly
• Faster path to funding
• Less dilution and no out of pocket expense
• Network with industry experts
• Competitive process. Let investors compete for your project
• One pitch to ~50 investors instead of 50 pitches. That saves time and resources. An all online process means no relocation
• More inclusive—screening and validating is done by investors or industry insiders

• Increase your deal flow
• Establish early relationships with great startups
• Fast Screening via concise, 25-word elevator pitches, shortlist, and drill-down on one platform
• Earn future equity and future investment rights in your favorite startups
• Access to consensus rankings from other investors and industry insiders

A SAFE is a Simple Agreement for Future Equity. A SAFE is a mechanism created by YCombinator to make it easier to invest in early stage startups where fair valuations can be difficult to determine. SAFEs can include future investment rights (“FIRs”) and other mechanisms designed to protect both the startup and investors, including anti-dilution protections that are tied to pricing of future investment rounds.

47Pitches uses SAFEs uniquely in two ways:

• As a simple way to reward and engage our ranking jurors with small equity assignments that don't require investment or complicated documentation. Our SAFES serve as a grant of a defined percentage of a startup's future equity at its exit IPO or Sale. Typically this is 1-2%, shared by the consensus-winning pool of judges and industry insiders who rank the winning projects in each contest.
• We also use SAFEs to allow founders to raise capital by selling SAFEs to qualified investors, subject to applicable regulations and conditions. This can make it easier for the founders to raise smaller sums of startup capital with a broader group of Accredited investors, both inside and outside the 47Pitches community.

Consensus is rendered on a weighted point system, where the total number of points a project receives is determined by each juror’s ranking (1 to 5) where a top ranking of #1 = 5 points, #2 = 4 points, etc.

So, for example, if a project receives 3 judge rankings as #1 (15 points), 4 rankings as #2 (16 points), and 5 rankings as #3 (15 points), its total points would be 46 points. If this point total puts it within the top three ranked projects, it would be deemed a contest winner.

The judges who ranked the contest winners would be eligible for a portion of the winning projects’ total SAFE allocations. A winning project’s SAFE assignment is allocated to the winning ranking judges in proportion to their ranking. The proportion of the total SAFE assignment allocated between the #1, #2, and #3 categories will, along with other terms, vary from contest to contest as defined in each contest’s SAFE agreement. Contest participants can contact info@47Pitches.com for information about SAFE assignments and other terms.

The core goal of our pitch contests is to allow investors, industry insiders, and great startups to create networked connections that propel the future success of the project. So it really doesn't matter if a startup ranks in the top 3 projects, even though a high ranking may increase the likelihood of faster funding. Regardless of a startup’s ranking we invite any investors who ranked it in their top 5 to participate in a syndicated funding of the project. Syndicate investment terms can be proposed by either the startup or the syndicate at the end of the contest, and both sides can negotiate funding on or off our platform. Our goal is to get deserving startups funded and mentored by engaged and experienced investors who add value to the project at all stages.

The contest also provides a new way for investors to access and vet LawTech deal flow more efficiently and negotiate current or future funding at early stage valuations. Both investors and law industry insiders can win equity positions or future investment rights in the consensus winning startups by ranking their favorite projects. You can also join the ongoing online mentor communities for any of the projects regardless of their final contest ranking.