The University of Connecticut will be hosting its 2021 UConn Innovators Pitch forum in a virtual setting on March 23.
In an interview with the Business Journal, Mostafa Analoui — UConn”™s executive director of venture development and the Technology Incubation Program (TIP) and adjunct professor of biomedical engineering and entrepreneurship — explained that while the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic shifted this year”™s event from in-person to online, the focus of encouraging new entrepreneurs to pursue financing from angel investors and venture capital groups remains the same.
“Most of these meetings happens one-on-one, in a private meeting with one company at a time to one investor presentation,” he said. “That’s the most common mode. But in order to convert this to an educational opportunity, we have opened up these pitches to the broader public so they can see what happens when a startup presents to investors, what kind of questions and pushback they will have by the investors, and what is the mentality and thinking of investors when they look at an innovator.”
In a way, Analoui added, the virtual setting is a blessing in disguise because it widens the forum”™s potential audience.
“Last year”™s event was held in Hartford,” he continued. “And more than 120 people were in the audience, which was really the capacity limit that we could accommodate. We want to make sure that others can see what happens in this process.”
The forum will have four companies with UConn roots ”“ Diant Pharma, 3BC, ACW Analytics and Potentiometric Probes ”“ making their pitches to a panel of five investors from the Angel Investor Forum. The event will conclude with a virtual networking session.
“Since we have gone to a virtual model, we have seen significant increase from people out of Connecticut,” Analoui added. “In the past it was Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts mainly participating. Now, we see people from California, Texas, Chicago, and we have even had participants from Europe calling in and attending the event.”
The event is free to the public and registration can be processed at this link.
UConn maintains a campus in Stamford.
