Pitch Night
5M seed, 1.2M ARR, 0 exit plan
Critically take a look around at your friend group. Are these serious business people who you would invest in? Well when I do this kind of critical self reflection, sure there are some people that I would hope I would invest into, like my coworkers or my boss. People who I have direct financial incentive to want to invest in. But if I could think of how to best make money from the general populus my friends, a few key ways come to mind.
First, I would film them. I have one friend who we all agree would be best suited to having a 24 hour live camera on him. Unfortunately this faces privacy concerns and thus I must consider the second option, investing in their business ventures. And because this is the valley, there is no lack of business venture to invest in. Well if my friends are good at anything, it is having absurd, wild, out there ideas, with an abundance of follow through, for things that likely will have no merit to society beyond today.
Now you dear reader, may be thinking to yourself, well in that case Mackenzie, does that make someone a visionary, if the visions they have are not “successful” by societies interpretation?
What if the idea for the iPhone came to Steve Jobs and people just didn’t want to buy it? Does that make him any less of a genius for having the idea for the iPhone in the first place? If silly bands were discovered at the same time that fire was does that make silly bands a worse invention just because it is being compared to its more successful, more useful ideas of its time? Segue: pitch night.
My friend Sam, has done this event a few times when he was back in college at Vanderbilt, where he runs a fake pitch night. The worst best idea wins, or the best worst idea, you know what I mean. At $1 margaritas, which my friends and I have been using as our official office hours if anyone has to contact us, they can come and tell us this information as long as they promise to not impede the 30 minute window in which we can get margaritas for $1, Sam told us he was hosting this event in a few weeks and Danielle and I knew that we had to present, for I am nothing if I am not a bad ideas guy. The event was hosted at the Nook, a community venue that Danielle and I have been using for some community events. Everyone who works there is super cool, and they are trying to make a space where people can host fun events so check it out if you are interested.
Sam set up a stage, had a microphone and a projector ready for the audience to be pitched. The idea that I presented was very near and dear to my heart, I called it tow&go, and because it is just me working on the idea, it qualified for a family company.
The pitch: instead of having a regular towing company, where you have to buy a lot, you just can tow cars to other valid spots around the city. I hate to admit that this is a serious business proposal I had pitched to Danielle a few months prior. The lawyers I contacted at the time said it had dubious legality, but what good business doesn’t?
I explained my pitch, I will include some clips from the event below, and some slides from my pitch deck. Then we had a questioning period where the audience can raise concerns of ideas, and we can beg them to invest one last time.
I had been kinda going through it at the time, funny enough people ended up actually voting for mine at the end to win, it was a super cute night at a time I really needed a win so thanks to Sam and Greta and everyone at the nook for hosting and putting on these fun events all of the time. For even if they seem stupid in the moment, they genuinely create so much joy and I love to get people rallying behind a funny idea.
Tow&Go - Video and Pitch Deck
Other presentations that night included:
For profit unions: this personally was one of my favourite ideas, where you get a company that is going to unionize, buy out their workers until the company is forced to negotiate with you, and then give them back the workers for increased rates and the demands they wanted, taking 10% and then going to unionize a larger company. I do think this may be the modern day equivalent of the mob, but were they were profitable back in the day. This was presented by Nick and Nisala, friends of Sam (This is foreshadowing for a future story).’
Doomscroll: A feed where you can only scroll bad things, or items that create feelings of dread and sadness, because what else is the internet for these days?
Spirit airlines for restaurants: the food is really cheap, but the chair, salt, cup, cutlery all costs extra. Customize your own experience. Maybe not the best place to take a first date. Unless you plan to splurge and get everything, to really impress her. Our other friends were hypothesizing how they could go and only buy one chair as a play on a date. Can you believe that we are all single?
Overlord.ai: never have to make a critical thought again and completely let AI run your life. Complete with push notifications and haptic feedback that will make decision making a thing of the past
.
Burner: replace a social media addiction, with a cigarette addiction, to kick social media once and for all. Custom phone case integration. I respect that this rejects modernity both in the sense of the social media addiction, but also it is going back to acoustic nicotine over new options like vapes and zyns, or sesh (sponsored by 8VC, please buy this one).
Wagmo: Waymo for dogs.
When’s Waldo: Where’s Waldo the audiobook.
What’s Next?
Since the pitch night, my ideas have not slowed. For they have been more frequent and worse in quality as I am getting better at honing the skill. I fear that Sam may have created a monster, or should I say a CEO. I am looking for investors for the following:
Giraircraffte: Commercial airliners for giraffe transport, by turning them horizontal. (Who knew that to transport giraffes they currently have a high ceiling aircraft, when I learned this I knew this must be modernized).
HorsePowerPlus: Diseased horses we rent out so car companies can offer higher horse power valuations. (Backed by PETA).
Additionally, my coworker has been trying to set up his own venture fund that he calls JMoney ventures, and I thought it would be great to incorporate a bunch of really stupid ideas and make sure I put in big branding on the website that he is leading my round. A few other noble coworkers have joined in fighting the good fight with me and we have been coming up with some truly impressively bad ideas. You may know us from…
Dog Scream: Ice cream for dogs. (The name comes from the slogan, dogs scream for ice cream, but has been causing issues around the office as we keep hearing it as Dogs Cream, which sounds much less appetizing).
Birds for your mouth: Tiny birds that fly to your location and will clean your mouth. They said this tier has non-skippable ads, and birds in your mouth premium is a secondary business that they have to launch at the same time.
Shampoo for Penguins: Self explanatory. Not sure why so many of the ideas are bird themed actually now that I type that out. When this idea was pitched to JMoney he rejected it and said he would only invest if it was the reverse of this idea (shampoo for humans, that smells like penguins).
More time: A time travel company, that offers time travel through relocation to a previous time zone (East Coast clients → Relocated to West Coast timezones, getting to relive those hours, in real time).
Construction avatar: my company sources a lot of construction footage, this is just making a new avatar movie by using the existing footage and editing everyone blue. We identified a real gap in the construction movie industry.
Forbes 30 at 30: arguably more impressive than Forbes 30 under 30, people that have exactly 30 dollars to their name at the age of 30.
Flipping humans: okay this one will have to be delicately, but in some way acquiring people, that you can then level up and educate and get a good job, taking a percentage of the flip. Need to find a way that doesn’t do this through indentured servitude.
On my contact page I have my business email for serious partners looking to work together on any of these ventures or if you have a better funnier company that you want to give me some equity in for little to no commitment from my side I would also be interested in that. Until then, I will be at work, going founder mode until we either get rich or die trying. Well most of us, JMoney probably has bigger things to be worried about.
construction avatar and flipping humans is so good please do this