As you all know we are wrapping up the Bing Perfect Pitch Contest and we would like to hear from the community.  We had so many great people pitch their ideas that we are having a tough time deciding ourselves.  What pitch do you think is the winner?

Kahlil Lechelt and Ryan Wiseman launched their own podcast This Week in TWiST similar to This Week In TWiT where they chat about the week’s show today.  They focus on each segment recapping what was said and often give a bit of background story to the topic.  If I am a caller pitching Jason on Shark Tank this is a must listen to, they give really good feedback on your pitch, what they understood, what they didn’t what they would have liked to have heard.  For a first episode I give them an 8, I found them interesting I enjoyed the background stories and I liked the format, there is room for improvement and I will continue to listen each week.

 
 
Download the MP3 Here!

Today Jason had the opportunity to speak to 55 seniors at Penn State who will all be working on the University’s “Idea Pitch” contest.  All the students are part of the Information Sciences and Technology school and will be pitching their ideas to the business school.

I really liked this interview it was not your normal TWiST episode.  While it had the same sense of humor and casual tone we get to hear Jason tell his story and how he learned and what motivated him.  You can even see the passion coming through at one point where I sensed emotional satisfaction in proving the naysayers wrong.

He starts off by asking how many people want to be an entrepreneurs and who wants to be a drone worker bee (about 6%).  Throughout the interview he motivates the class and opens many eyes about work life, later in the show he asks the same question to find a very different answer.

Entrepreneur core qualities:

• Entrepreneurial parents
• Recklessness gambling personalities
• Resiliency
• Focused
• Won’t take no for an answer
• You will disproportionately be rewarded if you succeed
• Work harder
• Must believe in yourself

Questions from the class:

• Do you stir the pot on purpose (Twitter)?
• What is your relationship with your employees?
• In the early stages do you worry about intellectual property?
• Can you be someone who is an entrepreneur within a company?

Who wants to be a rice picker and who wants to be a Samari?

 
 
Download the MP3 Here!

This week’s guest was Scott Morrow, CEO of ThisNext a social shopping search/discovery site that uses crowdsourcing to bring the best products to the top.  Highlights of the show are a live surprise call to a superfan and interesting discussion about arbitrage.

The show starts off with a great behind the scenes video (by Colorado Tech TV) of the Boulder Open Angel Forum event.

During “Ask Jason” we hear Denny Ferrassoli ask, what are the pros and cons to bringing real money vs. virtual currency to a social community.

Anibal Damião calls in for “Jason’s Shark Tank” and he pitches Influads an advertising alternative, where one advertisement is place on a website.

During the interview we learn about what it’s like to come in as a President for a startup with a founder still in the mix, the ins and outs of crowdsourcing methods and a detailed discussion about pay per click, arbitrage and paid search.  Scott brought up one ThisNext feature that was pretty interesting “Explore” a map that allows you to watch people shop live around the world.

Another contest was held on the fly, Charles Goffnett (ShirTeeapp.com) , a superfan, sent in four “Insight’s from Tyler” inspired t-shirts that were given to four fan’s chosen at random who thanked our sponsors.   Charles will soon be launching a site if you’d like to purchase one on your own.  I’ll be sure to post details once they are available.

Please rate the show in the comments, 1 – 10 (10 being best)

Ever wonder if your question has been asked or has something come up that was answered but can’t find it?  Do you need to perfect a pitch, why not learn from others.  In the cockpit we need to be able to find information quickly and often use quick reference checklist, beyond memorization so I created something similar for TWiST, I hope you find it useful.

If you find any errors please bring them to my attention and if I don’t have you linked or mis-linked in Twitter, email me at scott [at] thisweekinstartups.com.

The document available at DocStoc (pdf, xls) but I am unhappy with the format.  I would also like to add this to Slideshare and Scribd if anyone has some expertise in helping with the format, please contact me.

Once this gets buried you can find it at Quick Reference Guide on the right sidebar

On this episode of This Week In Startups, Jason is joined by Kamran Pourzanjani, CEO of Pricegrabber.com. The site provides a price comparison service that is linked up with 13,000 merchants, retailers, and sellers and overlooks millions of products by tagging each with “matter of fact” information. The site got its start in 1999 with only 1.5 million in angel funding leading up to its acquisition by Experian in 2005 for $485 million. Join Jason as he learns about the journey Kamran Pourzanjani took to build a startup and become a renowned entrepreneur and angel investor. Also catch his take on Jason’s showdown with the Keiretsu Forum!

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