How we got into STC InspireU Program, and how you can too

The inspire u program is an incubator launched by STC in 2015 for Saudi Startups run by amazing local and international mentors with mind blowing experience.

Out of around 950 startups that applied, only 50 are chosen during round #1. Then from the group of 50, only 25 startups manage to get qualified for phase 2 and then for Phase 3 only 15 startups are chosen for the program. 

Before we tell you the story, keep in mind it's no walk in the park, it's a 3 month process, a lot of work and documentation and I will tell you why it's all worth it even if you don't get in.

It all started in April 2020 when STC announced the date of the 6th intake.

First time applying for an incubator there was a lot of research involved and we would like to share some tips with you :

• Read everything in the application form. Go through the whole thing, take screenshots of each page and prepare for it , it is NOT a signup form IT IS THE APPLICATION FORM .

In the last page of the form you will find a field for attached documents , it says attach your business plan sooo casually. You know that field over there? That is the document they want ? Well it's a month’s worth of work at least :D

We called it the Arzag plus business plan/InspireU 2020, a 20 page document of which I’ll share the structure below.

So , that special document that takes a month to write, what's in it? Well … you have to find out on your own I guess.

Let's prepare for the document : 

1. Watch videos of presentations from previous intakes 
2. Research “PITCH DECK”
3. What is a pitch deck? download templates, read everything. A favorite of mine is this template. This was the ultimate template and also very similar to the template later sent by the InspireU team.

Well now that you know the structure of your pitch you have to start filling it out. These steps will help you get started:

1. Sign Up on LeanStack and i won't tell you more, you don't need more. This tip i got from a friend and it actually accelerated the whole process and gave us perspective over our business model, etc, we actually started making serious decisions at this point.

It is a table and it looks simple right? Well we wrote it about a dozen times, being a B2B and a B2C marketplace did not make things easier. Who is our customer?. Whose problem are we solving? Competitors? Well I can't help you much with this you have to do this one on your own but I can tell you one thing. Fill this canvas, be sincere, and you are almost done.

1. Okay now let's get down to business, what else do we need? we need to have one to two pages for each of the fields in this table, oh and you have to make it look pretty and presentable ( no need for a fancy designer - there are tons of templates online)

The Business plan (in detail) :

Table of contents of our document 

1. The Hook: Probably the most difficult part, well it was for us... just google it and weep!! It has to be short, says everything about your business like everything in 2 words :D how to do that? Well we did it in 5 lines (I don't think ours was great) it got us in, so something must have been good about it .(3 months later we redid this BTW)

2. Numbers : Key numbers, numbers that matter to your business (don't lie no need, if your numbers are great you don't need funding - you don't need anyone). Your numbers should show growth, you are growing month to month 

• Users 
• Installs 
• Signups 
• Orders 
• Retention Rate 
• Number of stores 
• Basket size 
• Active users 

Your business has to be scalable and you have something to show for it, don't forget to do some financial projection based on your growth rate. You might need help from an accountant for that.

1. Cost structure: I think this could be optional, in our case we added a small table saying what we spend money on. I wouldn't put any numbers there.
2. The Market Size: The size of the market you are targeting with your solution.

Now this is one of the most important slides and it requires research. Numbers, percentages. If you google this you will find the TAM, SAM, SOM lots of templates available for that online but the numbers are all on you.

How we decided on ours well, it changed half a dozen times but basically we want to turn all the F&B Market in KSA to online stores (Dear Competitors: it's a huge market!) 

1. The Business model: remember the 4 days of work on the lean canvas? just paste it in here and done !

Almost halfway there, more long nights, red eye days, and lots of coffee. Reminder it's a 3 week process! Maybe we were slow but it was our first time.

1. The next 3 pages were the Problem and Solution, the problem you found aka the gap in the market, the pain customers have and your solution for them. Think of how you can ease their pain, think of what they would do without you. Can you do that? Not easy but it is what you wake up in the morning to do so you should know it or atleast believe in it.
2. Our Customer Segments: Our favorite part. We have a lot to say here, a marketplace serving Merchants, brands, wholesalers, HoReCa, customers buying household grocery, basically everyone buying in bulk and retail. Cool right? Do you know who your customers are? Can you get the info from market research and analytics tools? Do you have analytics tools?
3. SWOT Analysis: Painful part, don’t lie, don't lie, write it down. Lots of templates are available online. Talk about the real things that matter not money, not prices, talk about team strength, product uniqueness, your partnerships, mention your disadvantages. Remember this is for you as a company and team to think about it's not just a document you want to submit.
4. Our Competitors: Well here we decided to be fancy, meaning we didn't just make a simple table for that one. NOO we did the whole Porter’s Five Forces a thing (non-MBA types probably haven’t heard of this) since it includes 10 days of research, writing, deleting, and weeping. And yes it's worth it. Remember you need a dense document since you’re looking for investors. You need it, do it, so do it, you can do it, and ONLY you can do it! (Details on this requires a full post)
5. Bare with me we are almost done. Let's talk about revenue: how will you make money? What's your plan? List them all, the current and the future. Dream on…BTW your current investor who is most probably your cousin or father inlaw does not count as a revenue stream.
6. You are at a point where things are getting boring, and let's face it you are done with the hard part so let's get personal, add some examples to strengthen your case. In our case we showcased how we increased sales for three of our top merchants, their names and logos and some numbers make your story relevant (don’t lie) there is living proof of what you do, assuming there is? Right? If not, get some.
7. Your team, choose the key people and just write a brief on their education, years of experience and role(s).

Important tip: it’s great if the Co-founder or the founder was full time (remember that one, you will be asked about it)

1. The Technology: if you can brag here just do it, you have an app or a website, what is built with, your road map, screenshots (we had a lot going on here so we wrote it down) not too long though.
2. Why should you be chosen? everyone knows you need money just please please don’t talk about it just DON'T. You need the money to scale up, you need a bigger team, a fleet, developers, you need to hire a full time developer for God's sake. Say that. Be Humble.
3. Review and discuss with your team, read it so many times. Work on the design to make it look professional and clean and read it all over again. Make it perfect, it shows you care, you are interested in this, no one is holding a gun to your head, imagine you enjoyed this (no you didn't :D).
4. One more step .Go to the form, the six page submission form with all the questions about your startup. All the answers you need for the form you have already in the business plan. It's so easy now just copy and paste and lean back (just kidding bite your nails for the next month till they choose you :D ) 
5. One more tip, do not wait till the last day of the deadline, things can go wrong, errors can happen on the form, or your document turns out to be too big and you were too cheap buy a PDF editing tool so you need to figure out resizing your document, your designer decided to be uncreative believe me stuff happens :D a lot!

After a month we got selected from 950 applicants. Only 50 were chosen, and we were one of them.

Part II 

The Presentation : 

Another normal day at work, a month later, you probably forgot about STC, and boom you get an email, a sigh of relief mixed up with some fear and...YOU ARE IN! YAY excited all over again. But not entirely, you still need to get through round #2 of eliminations, only 25 of the 50 accepted startups will pass.

The list of competitors looks tough now. We knew some of them and we were actually working on integrations with others so it was pretty clear the competition was strong.

Details of the process were sent in an email, we had two weeks to prepare for a presentation, only 5 minutes long.

The assessment interviews were going to be online this year through zoom, from the 12th -16th of July. It was a 15min interview, 5min for the presentation and 10min for the questions.

We were sent guidelines as to what should be included.

Things you need to know now: 

What is an elevator pitch?

You are in an elevator with an investor , you have to persuade him or get his attention in the short interaction, how to do that? Well this will be your presentation. You have five minutes, how many slides can you fit in 5 minutes? We did 11 slides , 12 with the Thank you.

This part requires a lot of practice , you need to keep it short and focus on the most important things about your business and of course follow the guidelines given by STC in the email.

We focused on our product here since it was our strength because we had a live application.

I will not go into details here but some of these tips might be useful:

1. Write the speaker notes, don't improvise read everything and practice with a timer
2. Tell a story, make it personal, give an example.
3. Follow the guidelines, it's good to break the rules but in my opinion following the rules here shows you are willing to learn and you respect feedback
4. Keep it clean and short, graphics are important.

We had two weeks to work on this. We submitted the presentation and booked a slot. Luckily this year it was online. I guess that made it less scary.

Our CEO did the presentation and it was really good, everyone was really silent in a zoom call to the point where we didn't even know who was listening, we just got in, did the presentation and then answered the questions. I don't think all our answers were perfect, we definitely could have done better but I guess it was good enough to pass to Phase 3. The questions were general about our business and growth, not too detailed.

Our slides were in English and the speaker notes were Arabic which was a great idea since it's our mother tongue and faster. Remember 5 minutes requires a lot of practice don't get cocky, you can easily choke.

Be enthusiastic, be interesting, be sharp, and turn off your phone.

July 19th we were selected with 25 other companies for Phase 3, we were so happy to have reached this far honestly, morals were high it was great just getting to this point 

Not much left to do here, we were in the boot camp and just had to wait for the boot camp calendar.

We got the boot camp schedule on August 21st , it was a 3 day program where you get world class mentors to help you with your presentation, you know the one that got you to phase 3, you need to have that and make it better, much much better.

When: 23th To 27th August 2020

• Day 1, 2 & 3 – Training and coaching – 23th to 25th from 3:00pm to 6:00pm

Tips on the boot camp attendance :

1. It's serious. You need to be prepared it’s not like a boring class you sit through, no, it’s intense. You need to cut down on your working hours on these 3 days.
2. Have your presentation ready with you, it doesn't have to be perfect but you will need it on the first day.
3. Be prepared to work on it after the boot camp, you will need to edit images and content (depends on your situation) 

First we were assigned a mentor, we were with Fadi Yahya who did an amazing job with his teams, he really took the time to listen and give us feedback and materials. 

We took turns to do the pitches and give feedback to each other (the 7 teams working with Fadi) which was great practice in front of a new audience.

After each day we did modifications and asked Fadi for help where we needed until we were ready.

Every morning my CEO and I practiced on the timing and modified our slides till it was perfect. We did this in English, all of it (optional).

On the last day of the boot camp we practiced with Fadi and after he gave us the good to go we booked slots with four other mentors who asked us some tough questions about our competitors and business model.

These slots I consider vital. Most of the discussions and feedback here really prepared us for the judges so don't be lazy it's just one night 4 hours of practice, you can do it !!

Take notes or record your screen, look good, turn on the camera, find a quiet corner, be humble with the feedback even if you are not convinced, just be respectful .

We submitted our final presentation on the last day of the boot camp replying to the email from STC, again don’t wait till the last moment things can always go wrong like submitting a really large document then sitting at 12am googling how to resize presentations :D You submit, you are given a time and date for the presentation, you gave it your all. Congratulations!!

You still have time to practice and work on some changes, we had access to our coach, everything was good, we had a day and half till our presentation which happened Thursday afternoon.

Our time slot was 1:30pm (block 2 hours of your time because you might be delayed).

Ammar our CEO did the presentation and it was amazing, on time, on point, it was perfect. We had 7 minutes of questions by the judges. No cheating here, know your business, your strengths, your team, your projections, your numbers, and YOUR COMPETITORS. I can't stress this enough, look at their apps, know what they are doing, you don't want to be caught off guard.

Longest 7 minutes, ever but it was over.

3 hours later the results were out and we were IN !! Very very happy day Alhamdulilah.

Will you be part of intake7 ? Goodluck !