Corporate Innovation Pitches: A Worthwhile Waste of Time
You should skip them, but you won't. So here's how to get some value.
This picture of frustration is a selfie by Anna Farberov, the GM of PepsiCo Labs. On LinkedIn, she recently shared five mistakes that 3,587 startups made in pitches she has been the audience for. The post has pulled in more than 2,100 comments in two weeks, which is unusual for anything that’s not click-bait. Overall, the comments tend to share frustration from the startup side, which is hardly surprising. Farberov and her peers are annoyed at startups that fail to customize their decks or react defensively to questions. But startup founders take it personally—they’re pouring blood, sweat, and tears into slim hopes of winning a corporate client. You almost never hear back, much less win. So, yeah, this strikes a nerve with lots of us. But, I give her credit for being the only client-side innovation leader I can recall to share an honest perspective from the other side of the table.
I started my career on the client side at Procter & Gamble. As a brand manager with a passion for digital marketing innovation, I listened to many, many pitches and spent $ millions of company dollars with startups. But I’ve spent most of the last 20 years on the startup side, and I’ve spent more hours than I can remember trying to get people like Farberov to give our company a shot. So much time and money were wasted. But the lure is strong, Dear Founder, and I know you’ll accept these opportunities when they come your way. I aim to add a bit more background and offer a few tips to get some value.
My Experience in Corporate Innovation Pitches
A year or so into my last startup, I received an invitation to apply for the Unilever Foundry—an innovation program created by one of the world’s largest global consumer products companies, to identify the leading marketing technology startups and match them with brands that are eager for new solutions. If chosen, we would get a chance to be flown to the annual Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, where plane loads of Unilever execs and many more from the largest brands in the world would get to see us pitch and visit our booth.
As the co-founder of a new social media mar-tech company, this seemed like an opportunity that could move our business ten steps ahead. We turned this into priority one and spent weeks creating decks, answering questions, and pitching our company. And we won! We were named one of a handful of winners and made plans for France.
Upon arrival in Cannes, we headed over to the venue, checked in, and were given a table where we would spend the week meeting with brand leaders, as well as a time slot to pitch the entire Unilever team and anyone else who was interested in learning about the winning startups. The scene in Cannes was electric as many thousands of global marketing leaders filled the streets. This was going to be great! We would sign a dozen brands and come back to the home office as heroes.
And it sucked…
Almost no one was in the audience when my fellow founders hit the stage to pitch. I recall a handful of fly-by conversations at our booth, mostly with the brands’ hungover ad agency personnel, who were assigned the task of doing the dirty work of talking with Foundry companies and writing up reports that no one would read. We drowned our sorrows in free Rose, then dusted ourselves off for the next at-bat.
This was the biggest but by no means my only experience with Corporate Innovation Theater. I’ve presented at plenty of similar events—for Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Frito-Lay, Nestle, and Visa, at headquarters offices from Seoul to Switzerland and conferences from CES to SXSW. I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars to go to events for “speed dating” with marketers. I can recall winning a single contract from all of this effort—from a leader at General Mills who ghosted us at the end of our 3-month trial, never paying his $30,000 bill.
Ironically, we later won millions of dollars of actual business from each of these companies, leading to our acquisition and building a $60 million business. How? By getting in front of the brand managers and marketing directors with a real budget, decision-making authority, and problems to solve.
Why Corporate Innovation Programs Fail
Some of my favorite people in business have been in corporate innovation roles. They’re not jerks—they’re mostly smart, curious tech geeks who are committed to making a difference in their companies. But they are almost always victims of the corporate structure.
“Corporate Innovation” is typically a cost center that has no accountability for delivering quarterly revenue or profit. As a result, these leaders tend to have little or no budget and are seen as low priority by those who do. Most people who do own P&Ls owners don’t mix with the corporate innovation teams. They simply run in different circles and report to different bosses.
And let’s be real: There’s some real anger and envy when innovation leaders make up fancy titles for themselves and get wined & dined in San Fran or the South of France while the Mountain Dew brand manager gets to sit on a broken chair in a tiny office in Bentonville, Arkansas getting yelled at by a Walmart buyer.
As a result, corporate innovation tends to focus on putting on a good show. Company execs want to show shareholders that they are leading what’s next, and corporate innovation teams must prove that they are doing work—especially at quarterly boondoggle conferences. What’s an easy way to show it? Invite a bunch of desperate startups to pitch for some Test & Learns! You, my fellow founder, are the entertainment, justification, and proof-of-work.
You’ll Pitch Anyway, Here’s How to Make the Best of It
You quit your safe job and have investors pushing you to grow faster. You’re struggling to get in the door at any company, and the rest of your team is looking at you with a mix of fear and frustration. So despite everything I’ve written so far, and seeing the example of a Pepsi innovation exec who has heard 3,500 pitches and bought almost none, you’re still, STILL!? going to accept the invite and fight for the chance to pitch for the chance to win a tiny contract. Why do we do it? Because there’s a chance—and startups are defined by daring to dream…
I can offer two suggestions for fellow founders who are unable to avoid the siren song of corporate innovation pitches. First, keep your expectations low and plan accordingly. Mainly this means minimizing the time and money you will invest. Send one person, not the whole founding team. Spend just an hour customizing your deck. Red-eye home instead of staying another night.
Then turn this opportunity to your advantage. You cannot control what the audience will think or how you compare to other startups pitching for the handful of contracts on offer. But there are things you can make happen to improve your business:
Gather Insights - Think of your audience as a focus group, looking more for information on your target customer and insights about how big companies work. Ask them questions, get them talking. The secret to a good pitch is speaking less than 50% of the time.
Get Meetings with P&L Owners - Whether you’re pitching at corporate headquarters or SXSW, chances are you can find some client prospects that actually own P&L. It’s a great excuse to say, “I’ll be at your office anyway; let’s grab a quick coffee.”
Milk it for Credibility - You can get some value from telling prospective clients, investors, and partners that you were selected for a corporate innovation event. We put the Unilever Foundry logo on our decks. If you were selected, it’s a signal worth sharing.
Connect with Fellow Founders - When the events are done, the founders usually gather for drinks somewhere nearby. That’s when the bullshit is turned off, and we can be real with each other. I’ve built long-term relationships and traded many tips and connections through these events.
Sharing tips for success and traps to avoid is a key part of what being a startup founder is all about. We’re an odd group, and it can be a lonely struggle. Every weekend when I pull up a blank Substack page, there are many other things I could be doing. But I know that sharing my experience with the right person at the right time can make a positive impact on their journey and maybe help their company make a valuable impact on the world.
Bob Gilbreath is a 2x-exit entrepreneur and co-founder of Hearty, a curated matchmaking service that combines top software developers with early-stage, venture-backed startups.