Jason’s Shark Tank – Transissimo
Nicky Hajal calls in to pitch, Transissimo a site that is described as Mahalo Answers for translation. “A community to help translate the world”
Jason and Shawn’s Comments:
- Good space the world is going global.
- Domain experience because of Nicetranslator, which is good
- Business model is lacking, how you will make money
- Didn’t understand what was unique about the idea
- Don’t get technical, you should be able to describe your idea to a twelve year old
- Consider a canned engagement ie. ask a question that you know the answer, this makes sure the audience is listening.
- Give a concrete example of the use of your product that will resonate and show off the best of what you can do. Paint a vivid picture of the use case.
- A better way to describe your idea is Mechanical turk of translation
- Jason asks to see some screenshots and a video of you explaining your screenshots.
Follow-up Questions:
You did a nice job pitching your idea how did you prepare? Have you pitched the idea before or did you just practice?
I’ve presented in the past, but this was our first pitch for a Tumble Design project. When I initially contacted Tyler about being on the show, we weren’t sure when I would be on. So, I was beginning to put together a presentation in my head already when I got an email a few days later saying there would be a spot for me the next day. At that point, I decided to focus the next 18 or so hours solely on preparing my pitch. Sixty seconds is such a short amount of time – I didn’t want to waste any with trying to figure out what to say.
I watched old Shark Tanks on your site to get a feel for where others did well and didn’t, as well as to have rough answers for common questions (of course, I wasn’t asked any of those ones!). The most effective structure seemed to be Problem -> Solution -> How it makes money.
I built a pitch around that framework and started practicing outloud, recording and listening as I went, figuring out what flowed well and what didn’t.
Of course, I would have loved even more time to improve the pitch but was very grateful I put in the preparation I did.
Did you place the screenshots on flickr and if so can you help me with the link?
Here are the screenshots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tumbledesign/4245115195/in/set-72157623139470670 – Haven’t sent them in to Tyler/Jason because we are still working on a set of videos.
Any advice you would give the next guy/gal?
For the guy (or gal) that’s wondering whether or not he should go on Shark Tank, my advice is a resounding “Do it!”. It is extremely motivational and you really learn a lot in a very short time.
For the guy that’s up next, I would say that the one critical piece missing from my preparation was pitching in front of people that had never heard of our project before. The perspective of a person who knows nothing about what you do is invaluable.
For the senior in highschool: Don’t accept that car from your Dad!
How can the community help you that may want to get involved?
The most important thing for us right now is finding multi-lingual people out there that would be interested in giving Transissimo a try and contributing to our community. Any help on that front is extremely appreciated
