It’s show time. Young companies from across Alberta are tarting up their business plans and sweating over speeches in advance of next week’s Banff Venture Forum.

Twenty-five executives will have just 10 minutes each to make their best pitch to an audience of investors in the hopes of attracting financing for their small and medium-sized companies.

“It’s not just a matter of trying to cram as much as you can say in 10 minutes,” says Wayne Karpoff, vice-president and CTO of Edmonton-based Internet storage company Yotta Yotta.

“You have some very definite messages you want to
convey. You don’t have to tell the whole story, but you want to tell enough of the story to entice a venture capitalist to come and spend some quality time with you.”

It’s the third year for the forum (Sept. 20-22) run by the Information, Communications and Electronics Technologies (ICET) Alliance. The alliance advocates on behalf of Alberta’s information technology (IT) community, and organized the Banff event to bring together IT entrepreneurs and the investment community.

While most of the 25 firms that will present this year are at an earlier stage of development than Yotta Yotta – the company has raised $75 million to date in three financing rounds – Karpoff says the company is always looking for new financing opportunities.

Two years ago at the first Banff forum, Yotta Yotta was among three firms named as a top investment prospect, and won an expenses-paid trip to Toronto to present at a similar forum.

“Since the fall of the dot-coms, proof by Power Point just isn’t there,” Karpoff adds.

“Now, it’s: ‘What is your path to real revenue, what are the demonstrable things you can show me today that says you’re on the path, and what third- party validation do you have towards that goal?’ ”

More than 250 delegates are expected to attend next week’s event at the Banff Centre for Conferences. Past forums have attracted both individual and institutional investors from Canada, Silicon Valley, Florida and Taiwan.

“We’re expecting strong investor attendance again this year,” says ICET Alliance executive director Keith Gylander.

“We worked really hard this year to target investors from the United States, and we’ve seen a lot of investors are looking to Alberta for the first time to see what it’s all about.”

Companies at this year’s forum are looking at raising an average of $5 million, says Gylander. And while there’s no expectation that investors will open their wallets based on an initial meeting with a tech start-up, presenters at the 2001 forum have collectively raised or acquired $45 million since last year’s event.

“What this venture forum is all about is building relationships – putting investors in front of companies. We don’t broker deals or guarantee they’ll be done, because they’re simply out of our control,” adds Gylander.

“But we have had presenting companies who have received investment and have been successful in raising capital, so it speaks to the calibre of those companies.

“We’ll see angel investors looking at doing $400,000 and $500,000 deals to large venture capitals looking at doing $20- million deals.”

So what are the ingredients of a successful pitch to a skeptical investor?

For venture capitalists such as Andrew Kyle, a director with Calgary-based SpringBank TechVentures, there are several prerequisites in checking out a potential deal: Does the company have customers that can be interviewed to see if the product or service has value? Is there a big enough market to sustain what the company expects from its business plan? And does the CEO have the experience to follow through in executing that plan?

“The whole dynamics of the industry has changed quite
dramatically,” says Kyle.

“We’re really looking for the leaders there that can communicate and execute. Hopefully, in the 10 minutes they get, they can convince us they are the one to lead the company, the company has some value in the marketplace, and they can encourage us to actually go the next step with that company.”

Kyle worked with ICET this year to help narrow the field of applicants to 25, and predicts some will strike gold either at the forum or as a result of presenting there.

“There are fewer companies to choose from, and there’s
quite a bit of money sitting there waiting to invest,” he says.

“I think the companies that we’ve chosen have really good prospects.”