Venture Roundtable| How to Nominate

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Cleantech Venture Roundtable Firm Nomination Deadline:
May 25, 2010

A company may nominate itself.

Summary of Key Dates:
May 25: FIRM Nomination Deadline
June 1: FIRM Addendum to Nomination Deadline
June 16: Dry Run Presentation to Judges
June 23: Presenters’ Luncheon
June 24: Venture Roundtable – Presentation to VCs and Angel Investors

Nomination

Once the nomination form is submitted, it will be reviewed by a Screening Committee. If your nominee has been selected to participate in the next level of the nomination process, they will be contacted for additional information.  If they have not been selected, they notified as such.

The selected nominees will be required to complete an addendum to the nomination form, which asks for more detailed information about the company, its technology and its financial outlook. A link to the form will be e-mailed to the nominee and the firm deadline to submit the addendum is June 1.

More details about the addendum may be found below. The nominee will be directed to this page for guidelines and instructions.

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The online nomination form allows you to upload the following
elements:

1. Executive Summary
2. OPTIONAL - PowerPoint presentation, up to 20 slides (sample here). This does not have to a final draft but viewed as additional information for the screening committee.
3. OPTIONAL - Excel spreadsheet providing your sales forecast for the next 3-5 years as appropriate. Information to be included for Last Year, Current Year (actual), Current Year (projected), Years 2 – 5 (projected):
   1. Sales
   2. Gross Profits
   3. Overheads

Please note that items 2 and 3 are OPTIONAL

Description of Nomination Elements

Executive Summary - Executive summary may not exceed five (5) pages. No attachments to your summary will be allowed.

Your summary should tell potential investors why your company will succeed. Investors want to know about your "unfair advantage." You must have a cover page complete with name, address, phone and fax numbers, and contact person. (Note: Your cover page does not count toward the five-page limit for this document.) Your opening paragraph should contain a brief summary description of your business. In general, it is a good idea for your summary to mirror, as much as possible, the categories used by the selection committee. Those categories are:

1. Management Team: Executive team’s track record.
2. Technical Readiness of Product: Clear description of product or service, including versus competition.
3. Market Need: Description, size, and growth.
4. Sales/Marketing Strategy: Target market and how you will reach prospective customers.
5. Core Competency or Competitive Advantage: Your Company’s unfair advantage.
6. Capital Efficiency: How investors will make money.
7. Financial: Financial plan and financing strategy.

Investors find the marketing strategy and management sections of particular importance: they will want to know how you are going to make money, and the track record of those who will make it happen. In your financing section, be sure to discuss how much money you are seeking to raise and roughly what you think your pre-money valuation will be.

PowerPoint Presentation - Presentation shall not exceed 20 slides
(Should be a serviceable but not final draft of the presentation the CEO will give to investors at the Venture Roundtable event). Your draft presentation should adhere to the story you tell potential investors in your executive summary. Pay particular attention to the categories used by the selection committee listed above. Use only those graphics and charts that reinforce your summary's claims or show market opportunities.

Judging for the Venture Roundtable
The evaluation process occurs in two steps. In the first step, the nominations are evaluated by our Screening Committee members. The resulting scores are entered into a spreadsheet and sorted so that the proposals are ranked in descending order. Then the selection committee meets to discuss the spreadsheet, which is used as a starting point for the conversation, not as a mechanical decision-making tool. The goal of this step is to select the top nominations for greater scrutiny.

The top nominees are evaluated on both qualitative and quantitative criteria. The quantitative evaluation puts heavy emphasis on the management team and the sales and marketing elements of the plan. The qualitative check is designed to be a "gut check" for evaluators to find those plans where the elements don't look good individually, but the sum total feels like it could be hot (or vice versa).

We reserve the right to change the criteria or the weighting or both, but this will give you a good idea of how we will approach the selection process. Once the process is complete the screening committee recommends 10 companies to participate in the second step of the process, dry-run presentations, which are reviewed by a panel of Distinguished Judges composed of industry experts from CONNECT's membership. The judges will rate the companies on their content and presentation abilities and recommend the final 5-6 companies to participate in the final Venture Roundtable event.

Presenting company requirements
If your company is among those selected to present at the final Venture Roundtable, you will be expected to agree to the following time commitments as you prepare for the event.

1. June 16: Dry Run Presentations – One Hour - You will provide a ten minute presentation to a Panel of Distinguished Judges who will determine the top six companies that will present to investors at the final Roundtable event.
2. CONNECT Orientation (Optional) – One hour – During the CONNECT Orientation, you will be matched with a CONNECT Entrepreneur-in-Residence, an experienced and connected senior executive with industry expertise in your specific product. The Entrepreneur-in-Residence will provide coaching that can assist you with your presentation. You will also gain insight into what VCs are really looking for from an industry insider.
3. June 23: Presenter's Luncheon – One hour
4. Present and attend the Venture Roundtable and Luncheon Reception – Present to an audience of active investors and venture capitalists and attend a networking luncheon following your presentation.

Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible to present at the CONNECT Venture Roundtable, applicants must have an interest in obtaining funding and must meet the following criteria:

Applicants must be:

• A privately held early stage or emerging company that is pursuing research or product development in the cleantech arena and is focused on commercializing technologies.
• Based in Southern California.

Companies may apply by completing the online nomination form. Invitations to present are extended based on the selection process and are conditional upon the successful completion of a dry-run presentation. (» Apply Now)

Program Contact: