During March, Metaspeech founded by Emma Zangs and Mariana Lucia Marquez, are helping the startups on the IncuBus London programme to better present their pitch. Rather than coming from a background of investment and tech, these two entrepreneurs come from a performing arts background. Their main focus is on how you pitch rather than what you pitch (there's enough help there as it is).

As someone who hosts pitching events I know the importance of how you present yourself and the difference it makes to the content of your pitch. That's why we work with them and why we interviewed them to find out more!

Can you give me a bit of background to yourself?

We are choreographers and creative directors. As coaches we help all sorts of people to perform better on camera or on stage. We’ve been working together for the last four years.

One year and a half years ago, a friend of us who works in the tech industry needed help to pitch his startup. He encouraged us to share our body-language knowledge with startup co-founders as they need to present regularly.

How did you get started with Metaspeech?

Mariana, my partner, was part of campus for moms, a pre incubator program to empower new parents. They helped her develop the idea and where to take it next. We then became regular speakers at campus for moms and spent a year coaching startup founders and teams, giving talks, and running workshops. We better adapted our performance coaching method to suit the specific needs of the tech industry. Last December we decided to give it a name and launched as Metaspeech. Et Voilá!

What has been the biggest challenge in starting Metaspeech?

Helping new businesses to grow and seeing the immediate effect of our coaching is super exiting and a huge driving force! Our biggest challenge has been to make entrepreneurs understand that they should not leave pitch practice to the last minute! It is hard for them and hard for us to make their pitch perfect for the big day in a limited amount of time. The skills we teach take time to become second nature. For us, pitching is performing and to be good at it you need to practice regularly.

So we are learning to be quick at designing a session plan that will tackle our clients’s short-term goals with a vision to their long-term aspirations. And we realised that the deal needs to be closed immediately, otherwise, the procrastinator takes over and following up becomes a nightmare for everyone.

How are you overcoming this challenge?

We go to evening events where we pitch what we do… that is very Meta (laugh). We are going to as many places as we can. We also hold office hours and give workshops at incubators, co-working spaces, and accelerators. These are great opportunities for us to meet more potential clients, show them the value of what we do, and sign them up on the spot.

It also help us to continue to tweak our offering to what the market really needs.

We are also actively looking for partnerships with other businesses that complement our skills and can help us grow. Our vision is to train more coaches who will use our method to empower entrepreneurs to pitch confidently and actually enjoy it!

Metaspeech is available for ideas and partnering. If you are interested, contact: Hello@metaspeech.com

How do you differentiate from the competition?

Our coaching is focused on body language and the content of your non-verbal communication. We work to align that with your text. When the body is clear, the message travels at the speed of light! This means that you are understood and you can move quicker to having the conversations that matter for your business.

What advice would you give any entrepreneurs just starting out?

Don’t be afraid of pitching! When you talk about your business you are inviting other people into your world, be proud of that world! And don’t focus too much on the idea itself  but rather talk about how you are implementing it. That’s what makes you an entrepreneur rather than a thinker.

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You can get a taster for their work at the next Flagons Den pitch session where they will host a 30 minute pitch practice before you get the chance to pitch your startup idea to the crowd.

Links:

Learn more about Metaspeech

Learn more about IncuBus London