Rock The Pitch‘s primary focus is to help create a layer of support for early stage entrepreneurs and small businesses, whom we refer to as “The Grinders”. By doing this, we hope to create a polished, smarter, and more prepared entrepreneur, allowing us to collaborate with other local funding opportunities and agencies to help these entrepreneurs move forward in obtaining their goals.
I believe we have a fragmented system that simply needs to be fused together with more collaboration and less competition. We all have a similar goal: to help startups and small businesses grow and succeed. We will use Rock the Pitch events to raise capital for micro funding through Investors, sponsors, ticket sales, and donations. The goal is to work together with organizations like Jumpstart, ECDI, SBA, Health-Tech Corridor, City of Cleveland as well as private investors and some of the nations leading VCs to build a fund that will fill this very early stage gap that exists in our region. These organizations have incredibles tools and support for entrepreneurs and small businesses and play a huge part in making RTP’s mission come to fruition. It’s a win win for everyone involved. I was blessed to have an Angel like Fred Geis take a chance on me when no others would, and I never forget that. Starting a company is tough and I hope my experiences both good and bad can help others.
The Oct 29th event will be the RTP kickoff discussing how we will be a major cog in the wheel of early stage support for our local startup community. We will also be helping all participating startups by providing micro funding and early stage advisor support. We will have hands-on advisors & partners from Red Point Ventures, Jumpstart, ECDI, Health Tech Corridor, Smartshape, McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman Co lawfirm, Cleveland Department of Economic Development and more. This will have a very “Townhall Meetup” feel allowing entrepreneurs to express what they are going through within our region and give the local agencies a chance to share how and where they can help. We have some very intriguing start-ups showcasing from tech to a food truck and it’s so exciting seeing what kind of talent we have in our region.
