PITCHfest 2010 – DFG
DevRich presented painFREE Development (aka “The Lazy Button”) at the 2010 PITCHfest. Competing in the 2nd round of pitch’s. I (Luke Webster) rolled out our new Free Portfolio Development pitch.
Peter Celeste of Oversee moderated the event. The panelists where judged by a seasoned board of professionals including the founder of DOMAINfest Ron Sheridan.
Root Orange (winner of the people choice award; congrats guys) kicked off day 2 of PITCHfest with an overview of their unique approach to “Localized Domaining”. Skinected was next showing off their very colorful monetized background skins for parked domains. Chad Folkening took the grand prize with his Rapid Domain Builder platform a robust system allowing domainers several options for buildout (nice work!). I followed up with DevRich’s new painFREE Development. Thanks to everyone involved it was a real pleasure and very entertaining.
One thing that became unfortunately obvious as the Q&A sessions began for us pitching was a slight disconnect from the judges on the reasons why we were all there. The idea was that we would be showcasing new development and monetization ideas/solutions for domainers. All parties presenting had prepared their presentations for being reviewed based upon Creativity, Viability, Originality and Revenue Potential (revenue for our clients) instead we all found ourselves in more of a SharkTank answering questions no longer from the perspective of a domainer (ie Johnny 50k Longtails) but from the perspective of a investor (ie Warren Buffett) looking at our corporate revenue model and bottom lines. A bit off base from what we all understood the objective was. I did feel that this change in direction was limiting and rather pointless for the audience as to my knowledge no one presenting was looking for investors/venture capital. That being said I don’t feel it affected the outcome of the awards. But I do feel we all could have connected more with our target audience with a bit more solution related questions and perhaps audience Q&A as well. From my experience domainers don’t care about my bottom line they care about theirs. Nor do they care how much work has to be done as long as they are not the ones doing it… =)
Looking forward to seeing you all again next year and thanks for the best domain conference we have attended. The hotel and staff at the Fairmont where excellent!
Luke Webster