At FundingUniverse we pride ourselves on doing everything we can to help entrepreneurs in any way that we can. This is a rather broad statement, but it’s true. We work with thousands of businesses a month, all around the USA and sometimes beyond, to help them with the variety of needs their ideas and businesses face on the way to financing.

Equity and debt are the two ways to get outside financing, and I dare say we offer more options, and a higher success rate, then any other option available to entrepreneurs today. So far this year, we have helped our entrepreneurs received over $30MM in financing, and we expect that number to grow strongly between now and year-end. In 2010, this number will increase dramatically as we open physical offices in Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Boise, Phoenix, Austin, Boulder/Denver, Chicago, Boston, Miami and probably a few more yet to come. The model we have for helping entrepreneurs find the right path to the financing they need is one we spend countless years/hours on. Our team is here everyday thinking of ways to help entrepreneurs be more successful.

One of the great things (and we would humbly submit that there are many) of what we do in regards to our relationships with entrepreneurs is the hosting of events designed to help them get the funding they seek. CrowdPitch is a ‘Shark Tank / American Idol’ style pitch featuring 5 great companies in front of a live audience and a live panel giving real time feedback. The winner of the event (announced at the event) can go home with as much as $5K in prizes. Audience members ask questions, write down feedback, and vote along side the panelists by placing FundingUniverse money in the hands of the presenting companies at the end of all presentations. The winner is the one with the most investment dollars.

Our panel of experts provides real time feedback as well – and in combination with their additional written feedback and the summarized written feedback gathered from our audience, we provide a detailed summary of all thoughts to our 5 companies within 48 hours of the event. Our presenting companies get tremendous value from the panel, the audience and the practice. Some would say the experience has been “invaluable”. In fact, we will agree.

Along those lines, and in partnership with our friends at TechStars David Cohen and Brad Feld, the fee for the 5 companies selected to be at CrowdPitch will now be $0. That’s right, zero. Nothing. Nada.

We want to help lead the charge that Brad and David have started and really live up to our mission of helping entrepreneurs. This is one way we know that we can. We will still charge a fair fee for other services that many find valuable (business plan writing, coaching, financing help, etc.), but we will not charge our entrepreneurs to present at CrowdPitch. We hope this is something that will bring us even more talented entrepreneurs to help and evaluate.

Spread the word, CrowdPitch is coming to a city near you! Let us help you and your business get the funding you need – equity or debt. If you aren’t selected to pitch, come watch. It’s free as well! And did we mention free food and drinks too? It’s become a free-for-all it appears. Again, we look forward to seeing all of you at our upcoming events. In the meantime, we again thank Brad and Dave for leading the charge here and we hope others will follow.

FundingUniverse has always been known as a great source for connecting entrepreneurs with active VC’s, angel investors and other lending sources. We’re passionate about helping people get their ideas off the ground, but the people we connect are also very passionate. Here are some of our favorite quotes collected from both entrepreneurs and investors. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, where we will continue to post new quotes as we collect them.

-“FundingUniverse continues to be a great source of deal flow for me. I’ve become a regular at the SpeedPitch events over the past couple of years and don’t plan on stopping anytime soon!”
Damon Kirchmeier—investor

-”The speedpitch got us in front of more investors in 90 minutes than we had gotten in front of the entire year prior. We landed our first meeting just 30 minutes after leaving the event. Anyone who is seeking funds and has absolute confidence in their idea needs to prepare for and attend a speedpitch event.”
-Alan Martin, Founder / CEO
CampusBookRentals.com

-“The UtahAngels have attended SpeedPitch since the beginning, and six of us were there yesterday! Typically, we invite one or two of the SpeedPitchers to present at our monthly meeting. Thank you FundingUniverse.”
Scott Frazier, Utah Angels

-”For a small company needing capital infusion, the SpeedPitch event was invaluable. Not only were we able to establish productive contacts within the investor community, but we also refined our investor pitch. The process of preparing for and participating in the rapid-fire presentation format challenged us to clearly articulate why Simplifile represents a compelling investment opportunity. Very worthwhile.”
-Rob Moore, Simplifile

-“I have been extremely impressed with the quality of the pitches I have heard through FundingUniverse. The coaching received from FundingUniverse helped entrepreneurs deliver their pitch in a clear and cohesive manner.”
R. Andrus, Investor

-“We walked away with $375,000! FundingUniverse helped us with our pitch and put us in front of the right investors to get a deal done quickly. We had 10-12 investors that were interested in our investment opportunity. It was a great experience.”
N. Alder, Entrepreneur

-”Funding Universe’s virtual/real-world hybrid method of introducing entrepreneurs to investors is more personal, more interactive, and more effective than any other method I have seen.”
D. Thorpe, Investor

-”Funding had been the biggest obstacle to starting our business when we inquired into the services that Funding Universe offered. It took time but we were able to find the investors we needed and start our business even during a world financial crisis. The most important contribution that Funding Universe gave us was the ability to understand and approach investors, which helped us make the changes we needed to move forward.”
S. Walker, Entrepreneur

As a result of some confusion between our Speedpitch and LivePitch events, we’ve changed the name of our LivePitch events to CrowdPitch.

What is a CrowdPitch?

Well… have any of you seen the new TV show on ABC called SharkTank? Well, the CrowdPitch event is a nice mix between SharkTank and American Idol. Essentially, 4-5 companies pitch their business to both a panel of 4-5 investors and a live audience of 100-200 other business owners. After the presentation, the panel will provide real-time feedback (Simon Cowell style) to the entrepreneur.

In addition, the audience plays a large role in the event: we give each member of the audience $100 of monopoly money that they can “invest” in their favorite presentation. After all the “investments” have been made, we count up the monopoly money and provide a nice $2-$5k prize pack to the winner!

What is the difference between CrowdPitch and Speedpitch?

This is a question that we get asked on a regular basis. The main difference between the 2 events is the audience. The Crowdpitch event is intended to attract a large audience — networking is an important component of the event. However, the Speedpitch event is a very exclusive/intimate event where only the 6-10 presenting companies, the 20-45 investors, and a handful of select sponsors are invited/allowed to attend.

Coming to a place near you…

I guess that I should let you know that we have announced our events for the remainder of the year and, if you are in the west, it’s likely we’ll be coming to a location near you! (If you’re out East — don’t worry, we’ll be coming their soon enough). Here is a brief overview:

September 30 – Denver – CrowdPitch
October 7 – Utah – SpeedPitch
October 14 – Boise – CrowdPitch
October 28 – Phoenix – CrowdPitch
November 4 – Utah – Social Entrepreneurship CrowdPitch
November 18 – Seattle – CrowdPitch
December 2 – Utah – SpeedPitch
December 16 – Portland – CrowdPitch

If you are interested in being a part of any of these events, let us know (send an email to members “at” fundinguniverse.com).

It was recently announced that Kai-Fu Lee, President of Google China, would be leaving this position to seek other opportunities.  Lee left Microsoft in 2005 and joined Google in an effort to increase its reach and overall popularity against popular Chinese competitor Baidu.

The biggest opportunity Lee is working on is setting up an investment fund called Innovation Works, which will invest in Chinese start-ups.  The goal of Innovation Works is to give entrepreneurs financial and other necessary support so that they can concentrate on developing cutting-edge technologies and services.  Lee says that his goal is to get companies up and running quickly so that within 9-12 months they can attract later stage investments.

Photo Courtesy NY Times

Last Wednesday FundingUniverse had the opportunity to team up with Portland Ten, NedSpace, and Stoel Rives to host Lunch 2.0 Portland Livepitch in Portland, Oregon.  Every couple of months we host a similar event and this, like the rest, was a great success.

The following five companies were selected to present their ideas to our panel of experts and a live audience during the two-hour event:

• Bright Neighbor
• BioAlgene
• Optical Specialist
• Spiritworks Software
• JourneyGym

The panel of experts included Ashleigh Williams from Willamette Venture Group, Eric Pozzo from Oregon Angel Fund, Todd Bauman from Stoel Rives, Carolyn Duncan from Portland Ten, and FundingUniverse’s very own Brock Blake.  Each member of the panel as well as the audience was given play money to invest in the company of their choice.

JourneyGym was chosen as the winner of this event.  Their pitch peaked the interest of all in attendance and as the winners, they were offered the following prizes:

• $500 of legal services from Stoel Rives
• $2500 in funding consulting from FundingUniverse
• 5 Startup Workouts and a Startup Checkup from Portland Ten

All five companies that presented were given the invaluable opportunity to practice pitching their idea as well as get great feedback from the experts.  They were also put in front of Angel Investors and VCs looking for the next big idea.

John from JourneyGym said

“I just wanted to write to thank you for scheduling the . . . Livepitch even this past Wednesday.  We appreciated the opportunity to be involved and were excited to have had JourneyGym win.  We of course look forward to working with you on your evaluation of our fundability as we work to complete our subsequent round of financing.”

The other four companies had similar things to say and all had a great experience at this event.  Stay tuned for info about other Livepitch, Speedpitch, and online Speedpitch events happening in the near future!