Stage fright? Pitch your startup idea without taking the podium on GoPitch

Besides going door-to-door, one of the most efficient ways for startups to get public exposure and validation today is by pitching at prominent tech events. Unfortunately, the very notion of getting up on stage alone (while the rest of your team stands to the side) is enough to make many grown men and women pee their pants.

What if you could reach out to an audience with a simple and short 35-second pitch instead? I’d imagine there would be a lot fewer wet pants. This is the idea behind Melbourne-based GoPitch, which is somewhat like Product Hunt, only with audio pitches.

Co-founder Melvin Chee hit on this idea while watching nervous entrepreneurs take the stage one after another at TechCrunch Disrupt. “Why not create a super simple platform for people to pitch their startups and ideas to get feedback from anyone, and exposure at the same time?” he thought.

While the maximum duration of 35 seconds seems like a frighteningly short length of time for a pitch, Chee claims that “most of the best pitches on the platform are actually shorter than that.” And the best pitches have paid off handsomely so far, with some founders seeing their site traffic increase by up to 70 percent on the day of submission.

Other than web traffic, there are additional benefits to submitting on GoPitch as well. “Through our platform, some startups even managed to form some sort of partnership benefiting each other. Others have also made the next step of catching up with each other since they’re based in the same city,” says Chee.

At the end of the day, though, the founding team – which includes the third and final co-founder, George Wong – simply wants to help fledgling founders get their act together. “I hope by putting one’s pitch out there, [founders] can get great feedback to improve their pitch, and perhaps get exposure, build connections, and so on along the way,” says co-founder Rahul Goel in a response on Product Hunt, where the duo had previously submitted their GoPitch idea to a largely positive reception.

The platform has received over 50 pitches so far since launching in September, and attracted close to 20,000 unique visitors in total. Not bad for an idea that was pulled together over a single weekend, and Chee certainly agrees.

“We think we’re on to something, so we’re cementing the concept and target audience,” he says, and believes that further growth can be achieved through bootstrapping, so no funding required – for now.

According to Chee, the team already has some ideas on how to monetize the service. “Promoting pitches and offering exclusive access to pitches – think daily rapid fire pitch podcasts for venture capitalists – to more obvious ones like advertising are being considered,” he reveals.

See: Hackathon success stories are rare, but here are two startups that broke the mould