It's not about women need to take a page from then and own their own success is to enable the others. Hello, you're listening to the first podcast to go for women and take in all those who want to build a smart general equity for take 10 minutes really actionable advice at 50 in Tech. We give you the keys to unlock the tech industry and move it. For real today. We are proud to welcome Ian McDonald CTR in Residence at Microsoft for start-up and one of a Pioneer partner. I'm in McDonald and I'm CT on Resident at Microsoft. Startups and Western Europe today, I want to talk about how we can help women how we can now introverts to really flourish in the startup ecosystem. So I want to talk about why we're doing the way with pitching and how there are practical steps to make you better. One thing that we've found here at Microsoft is that pitch decks don't really work a pitch deck is a short presentation outlining the business plan for a start-up in the startup world. This is often been used as a convenient way for VC's to judge who they should accept and by incubators or accelerators to judge who they should help these pictures are delivered by the founders and they can be given as little as three minutes to talk about their company, which means that you're often being judged on your Listen a writer what pitch sticks do is tell you who's good at selling and we don't want to know who's good at selling. We want to know who's good at building. So wherever possible we're actually doing away with the concept of pitch decks. When we invite people to join our program. We send them out a questionnaire so they can fill it out on their own time and in their own way and then when people come into the office, what we do is we have a series of meetings with them and we just sit there and ask them to tell them about their product tell us. About their background. We don't let them use slides. We just get them to actually talk to us. And what we find is that we find people who are passionate about their products who understand how to build their products and how they understand their markets. So what do you want to do? Do you want to find somebody who's a best salesperson or do you want to somebody who has a best startups? So when we've changed this approach what we've seen is that we've seen quite a different range of people coming into our programs and the people that were able to help we're able to help those that Introverts woman are more likely to apply because they're not having to sell themselves in a masculine way. We're finding that older people are applying and the statistics actually show that when you include women when you have older people when you have introverts, you actually have a higher success rates with startups all the statistics show that diverse Founders massively increases the profitability of startups and we've certainly found that ourselves recently an hour. AI for good in take that we ran we had a company called thermophiles, I that the woman leading it was a woman in her 50s. She was quite shy and she wasn't sure about even applying and then we actually sat down and had a chat to her and she was very open was able to express your product extremely well and then she got to the end of it and she said okay. When do I do my pitch? And I says you don't have to do a picture as we talked about. facts explain your product very well and we actually want to take you on board and she was totally amazed at this difference because it empowered her to to come into our cohort and to build a company and she would never have been accepted under a traditional approach and now she's doing amazing things initially we did this because we didn't have time to listen to all the pictures and we introduced a forum for people to fill in and then when we introduced the form we accidentally Covered that actually increase the range of people that we wanted to talk to because what was coming through on the form was actually quite different when people just came in and gave a three minute pitch on a PowerPoint deck. So when we realize the benefits of that that's when we stuck with it. And then we also remove the pitch in the office after the form and introduce just a face-to-face meeting or alternatively over Scott. It is hard when you're an introvert when you're different from somebody else whether that's because you're from a diverse background Your woman to break into the the world of startups. So it is a matter of pluck out the courage and getting going it isn't always easy remember particularly when you have to do things like Financial projections that estimate very high mean we'll always overestimate the amount of sales and profits at they'll get in. I've seen quite a few examples where women will come and show me their financials and the numbers are much lower and when I asked them they Says well, I've only got a 20 percent chance or 30% chance of hitting this higher number. So I didn't put it down where we're a man will put that higher number and then add even more to it. So I say to people, you know, take the most optimistic number and that you can think of and use that as your number because that is what others are actually doing and unfortunately you need to do it yourself. We are going to get rid of this process as time goes on. We need to change a whole Venture Capital world. We need to change. Hope action world. But in the meantime, that's a concrete way that you can make yourself a more viable startup by making those numbers that you project everybody more optimistic. We have found that woman and startups are providing a couple of key advantages. We're finding that the understanding the customers better rather than talking over top of the customers. They're actually listening to customers for taking the time to understand problems with the product. When customer tells them something is broken rather than being defensive. They're actually listen to them empathizing them and then helping make the changes in bringing that forward. So your we're seeing definitely much happier customers when women are involved in helping run the company and we're finding that the companies themselves much more restful and much more achieving and that doesn't mean that they are slow and progress far from it. They still driven forward but in a More productive manner at Microsoft. We want to empower every person on the planet to achieve more and we can't do that if we forgetting 50% of the population as such we're hugely excited by the platform that 50 and Tech is building and we're proud to be a launch partner in our late stage accelerator. We already have a high percentage of firms with female Founders and we want to lift this to 50% We see our partnership with 50 and Tech is one way we can help move this. Us forward I'm excited person who about the 50 and Tech platform because I've seen many female entrepreneurs who haven't achieved their full ability. I've also come from a background of difference. I'm high functioning autism. So I want to see people of every kind promoted and we can't leave behind people in any way shape or form. If you like this podcast subscribe comment and share and give us a five stars note on your preferred platform. She'd be iTunes Google or some cloud and if you want to empower women at scale Sharon advice on 15 Tech.com.
I'm Ian McDonald, CTO of residents at Microsoft for startups in Western Europe. Today I want to talk about how we can help women, & how we can help introverts to really flourish in the startup ecosystem. So I want to talk about, you know why we are doing away with pitching and how there are practical steps to make you better.One thing that we’ve found here at Microsoft is that pitch deck don’t really work. A pitch deck is a short presentation outlining the business plan for a start up. In the startup world this has often being used as a convenient way for VCs to judge who they should accept and incubators or accelerators to judge who they should help. These pitches are delivered by the founders and they can be given as little as three minutes to talk about their company which means that you often been judged on your skill as a new rater. What pitch decks do is tell you who's good at selling, and we don't want to know who's good at selling, we want to know who's good at building so wherever possible we're actually doing away with the concept of pitch decks when we invite people to join our program we send them out a questionnaire so they can fill it out from there on time in their own way, and then when people come into the office what we do is we have a series of meetings with them and we just sat there and awesome to tell about the product tell us about the background we don't let them use slides we just get them to actually talk to us, and what we find is that we find people who are passionate about their products, who understand how to build their products, and help I understand their markets, so what do you want to do? Do you want to find somebody who is a big sales person or do you want somebody who has a big startups? So when we’ve tried this approach what we’ve discovered is that we’ve seen quite a different range of people coming into our programs of the people that we're able to help. We’re able to help those said the introverts. Women are more likely to apply because they are not having to sell themselves in a masculine way. With finding that older people are applying and the statistics simply show that we knew you include women, when you have older people, when you have introverts, you actually have some higher success rates with startups. All the statistics show that the diverse founders massively increases the profitability of startups and we've certainly found that ourselves. Recently and now I only for good intake that we ran we had a company called ThermaFY that the woman leading it was a woman in her fifties she is quite shy and she wasn't sure about even applying and then we actually sat down and had a check to her and she was very open, was able to express her product extremely well. Well and then she got to the end of it and she said: “ Okay when do i do my pitch?” and I said:  “you don't have to do pitch, we talked about, you’ve actually explained your product very well and we actually want to take you on board” And she was totally amazed at this difference because it had empowered her to come into our cohort and to build her company. And she would never have been accepted under a traditional approach and now she's doing amazing things. Initially we did this because we didn't have time to listen to all the pictures and we introduced a form for people to fill in and then when we introduce the form we accidentally discovered that actually increased the range of people that we wanted to talk to because what was coming through in the form was actually quite different when people just came in and gave a three minute pitch on a PowerPoint. 