The story where Josh actually pitches GetScientific for the first time

Wednesday night was a big night for me and a big night for GetScientific. I went in front of an audience of 130 entrepreneurs and 4 big Seattle venture capitalists and gave our 15 minute pitch. It was the first time I've pitched any idea and the first time GetScientific saw the light of day to a captive, influential audience.

The 15 second pitch:

"I'm Josh from GetScientific.com and we make studying science suck less. We're a link and learning guide rating and submission site for physical science students and professors. Upload your class notes and submit your great science resources at GetScientific.com."

The event information is here so you can see the format:

• 30 people pitch for 15 seconds
• 10 semi-finalists pitch for 60 seconds
• 3 finalists pitch for 2 minutes

He's the friend I came with giving his all to give you an idea of the venue (it's literally the basement of a tech incubator, which adds, like, 100 cool points):

Like a good little entrepreneur, I made sure I had all three but practiced the first the most. The 15 second is above, here's the 60 (and the slides they said we should have but no one else had them):

Once upon a time I was a chemist and when I was becoming a chemist, I noticed one frustrating thing and one interesting thing:

Frustrating is trying to augment your textbook with Google; valuable resources are rarely SEO optimized.

Interesting is that science students amass notes, learning guides, and links throughout their education that never seem to make it to the next class.

We built GetScientific to help students pass the hardest classes universities have to offer - Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Mathematics, and Computer Science - by giving them a place to easily find the best information on their specific topic.

    •    Crowdsourcing by rating the notes and links
    •    Content generation making it easy for people to pass on their notes and resources
    •    Social interaction through connections and comments

Almost 200,000 students enroll in college physical science programs every year so that's a huge base of new users added annually. In addition, we've been working with professors and people in the industry to make sure the same things that appeal to students will make it easy for everyone to contribute.

GetScientific.com: We help make studying science suck less.

The 60 second pitch is supposed to be a story, state the need, and meet the need. Not too bad. I had it memorized, definitely, but I also had notes; you can never be too careful.

I figured making it to the third round was unlikely but, in the spirit of thinking positively, I made sure I was ready. Here's the 2 minute (and, yes, the slides):

Two critical pieces of the GetScientific business model:

1) Very targeted audience
2) Doing something good

The targeted audience appeals to advertisers and sponsors while giving back to the scientific community appeals to universities who contribute a large part of our content. We think finding a balance between profitability and philanthropy will be easy.

The way to economic success is through:

1) Job listings - targeted by overall category or specific tags, paid for by the lister
2) Sponsored content - schools and companies can pay for a sponsor account and submit helpful content tagged with their logo, colors, or advertisement
3) Section take-overs or complete sponsorships - chemistry section taken over by UCSD? Computer science section taken over by UW?
4) Publishing company competition/collaboration - textbook publishers are going crazy figuring out how to take a big step into the present; we can act as a bridge.

Giving back would be through:

1) College scholarships
2) Promoting active student profiles
3) Helping students find jobs after school

Our team

Me, Josh Cunningham, I have an ACS Bachelor's of Science degree from San Diego State University but switched my career to web design and development soon after graduating. I run a small SEO and development business called joshcanhelp.com.

Christoff van Niekerk also has his ACS Bachelors of Science in Chemistry from San Diego State University and is currently attending Loma Linda medical school in San Diego. Christoff is that guy you study with and try to hate because he's so damn good at the material but he's so damn nice that you can't.

We have an advisory board forming now with professors and folks in the industry but no names at the moment.

Traffic on the site increased recently with the start of the recent school session.

It wasn't completely formed but better than nothing!

Well, I went up, gave the 15 second, got a laugh out of the crowd, and felt like I did well but I was not selected to move on. Out on the first cut… ouch! Still, I got a great response from a few folks in the audience and was very happy to find a reason to build a pitch for this site we've poured ourselves into. It was a great experience and now I know that, as it stands, we're not quite VC material yet!