Should You Apply to the South Dakota Giant Vision Competition?

Hey, guys, Matt Paulson here. Today, I want to talk a little bit about the South Dakota Giant Vision competition, more commonly referred to just as Giant Vision. Giant Vision is a startup pitch competition for South Dakota residents that have a business idea or have launched a startup business and want to compete based off the merits of their idea and their pitch to win some prize money. Giant Vision is put on by the Governor's Office of Economic Development. That's a state organization that tries to grow South Dakota's economy by encouraging business growth and business migration to South Dakota. So trying to get businesses in other states to move here, Giant Vision has got a variety of sponsors that cover all the prize money and cost the events. So it is free or close to free for startup businesses to apply. I don't know if it's few or not, but if it is, it's not very much. But if you want to kind of participate in a competition, the idea is that you write an extensive business plan that kind of outlines your idea and then you submit it to goed Governor's Office of Economic Development. And then you have to apply, I think by February 15th of each year or about then Again, more information on the website. I'll certainly link to that in the description below. But then of all the companies that apply, they will pick out the top eight participants based off the business idea, the application that you submit that outlines your business plan and everything else. So they pick out eight companies to pitch at the competition, which is in April at the Giant Vision contest. So the Governor's Office of Economic Development, they have a state conference every year. You know, I think it's April 10th and 11th of 2019. I could be wrong. Go look it up online. And then at that competition, the companies that are selected have a chance to pitch their business idea. They'll have kind of a trade show area too, for a couple hours where businesses can set up shop and say, hey, this is what we're all about. And then angel investors, people like me, venture capitalists, just other people that are interested, can go talk to them, have conversation, and then there's a judging process. So there's a variety of venture capitalists, the guys over at Black Hills Regional Angel Fund, we work with them a lot there. Some of the judges, and then there's, I don't know, five or six different judges that are kind of seasoned business leaders or venture capitalists in the state. And the judges kind of get together, hear the pitches, and kind of pick the winners. So there's prize money for the top five entrants into the competition. First prize is twenty grand, second prize is ten grand, third prize is five grand, fourth prize is three grand, and fifth prize is two grand. So prize money certainly nice. I think applying to GiantVision, if you are a startup, I think there are some good reasons to do it and some bad reasons to do it. And, and I just want to kind of walk through why you might apply for a Giant Vision and maybe some reasons that you shouldn't apply. I think there are really three good reasons to apply to Giant Vision. First, it kind of gives you a process to think through your business idea. So if you are forced to write out a business plan that covers all the different aspects of your business. Sales, marketing, product development, hiring all the different boxes you need to check. If you kind of force yourself to go through that process, it will help you develop your business idea. Second, it will give you a chance to pitch your business idea in kind of a safe and friendly environment. So you're better off making your pitching mistakes. You're screwing up in front of people that are friendly and you're not asking for money that way. When it comes time to pitch a customer, you've got all of your mistakes kind of polished out and you're really giving them a clean and smooth presentation that has all of the facts that they need to hear. Finally, winning a competition like this is good pr, so certainly you'll get a news story about it. You'll get in New York theater, you'll get in Sioux office, that business, plenty of other places that kind of announce the winner. So getting your name, business name mentioned in the newspaper, certainly not a bad thing. I do think there are some bad reasons that maybe people enter this competition thinking it's going to do something for them that it won't. So I just want to caution you a little bit about what entering into the Giant Vision competition or really any startup competition will do for you. First, if you think entering a competition, doing really well and winning, if you think that's going to get you customers, you will end up disappointed. The audience that pays Attention to GiantVision is really kind of startup community leaders and the economic development community. So unless you are selling to venture capitalists, angel investors, people like me, or the people that work for state, economic, state and kind of local economic development agencies, unless those people of your audience, you're probably not going to get any customers. Because if you are selling to farmers, the reality is farmers don't go to that competition. If you are selling to small businesses, not many small businesses attend GiantVision. Your customers are probably not at the event, so don't assume you're going to get any customers by pitching and participating in GiantVision. Second, if you think that being part of the competition will validate your business idea and tell you if you have a great business idea or you don't have a great business idea, you're also going to end up disappointed. The unfortunate reality is that the panel of judges, smart as they all are, I know most of them, they're just not going to be able to determine if you have a feasible business in the hour or two that you end up getting judged at the event. They could look at your business and it could be genuinely a terrible idea, but then you could have a pivot and it could be a great idea, or it could be a great idea and they just don't see it, or they think it's a great idea and it turns out it's not a good idea. The reality is you just don't know if a business is going to work after hearing an hour pitch. Because the reality is all the pitches sound good, everything sounds good, but you don't really see the flaws in the business idea when that pitch happens. I actually went back and looked at the 2008 and 2009 entrants about 10 years ago. That was when I applied to GiantVision. And from what I can tell, maybe four of the 10 top five placers in both of those years are still in business. The majority of the companies that won giant vision 10 years ago aren't in existence. So don't think that winning Giant Vision is going to be this big. Green flag, thumbs up, you're good to go. You're going to have this awesome business. The reality is that's not the case. The likelihood of your success is probably going to be no different if you won Giant Vision or didn't even get considered to pitch Even of the 2018 winners last year, I believe one of the companies never launched and two of them haven't generated any revenue yet. A couple of companies are doing quite well. We invested in one of them, Hutchinson Technology, we invested in those guys. Good group of companies last year, but it's just not a sure sign for success. So if you do win, you do really well. Your work has really just begun. There's so much to do in terms of developing out your product and finding customers and sales and marketing and all the stuff that is involved in running a real business that Giant Vision is not going to really prepare you for. Again, three really good reasons to do it. It'll help you think through your idea, it'll help you practice your pitch and it's good pr. I want to caution you that entering a competition probably won't give you customers and won't validate your idea. This is much more under the theoretical end of pitching a theoretical business than it is developing a real business. And pitching to real customers is just not that it is a good event. I think it's great for the startup ecosystem. I think it's great for the economic development people. I like the event. I want you to be aware of what it can do for you and what it won't do for you. So feel free to enter it. Just don't let it become a major distraction and don't think it's going to do something for you that it maybe can't do. Before I kind of cut off this video, I will tell you guys about my experience with the Giant Vision in competition the Giant Vision Competition when I applied in 2008 so there's a guy at DSU named Josh Paulaj. He was running a one year program called the center for Techno Entrepreneurship. My company American Consumer News, which is the same legal entity that owns MarketBeat today Josh said hey, maybe you should apply for this. I think it could be good for you. So I went ahead, I did all the work and I applied and I didn't even get past the first round of judging. I wasn't invited to pitch and to be fair, I probably wouldn't have picked my own company back then. Didn't know what I was doing, didn't know how to pitch. I was a 22 year old kid, had no business experience so the 33 year old Matt probably wouldn't have picked the 22 year old Matt back then nobody really knew what an Internet only business was. But if you don't make it past that first round of screening as I didn't, don't let that stop you. Don't take that as a negative sign that wasn't the right opportunity for you. But my company that didn't my pitch was we were doing more personal finance stuff then but the idea was having content sites that have financial information on the Internet. So it's really the same model. Yes. Pivoted a little bit different. Yes. A different name but it was really the same business idea back then as it is today. And that business MarketBeat back then called American Consumer News didn't even make it past the first round of screening and now it does over 6 million a year in revenue and employs 6 people. So if you do apply and you don't get in, don't feel bad or take it as a sign that you aren't onto something with your business because maybe you just didn't have a good pitch or maybe your idea is too early or who knows what. So those are my thoughts on Giant Vision. Great event, good people behind it, good for the state, good for economic development. There's some good things that can come from it. Just don't put your hopes too high on what it will do for the actual development of your business. Hopefully this is helpful to you. If you're considering applying and if you are running to start a business and you do want that experience in thinking through your business idea and maybe some prize money and having a chance to pitch, go ahead and apply. I'd love to see some of you guys apply. Certainly. I'll be visiting with the companies at the event this year so I'd love to see some of you see some of you there.