Gainesville entrepreneurs may don their cowboy boots to pitch their startup ideas.
The 5th annual Gainesville Area Innovation Network (GAIN) Investor Pitch ShootOut will be held tonight at the Harn Museum of Art. The event will be staged like a western-style shootout, where start-up companies pitch their businesses, battling against each other for the “top-gun” title, said Lee May, the executive director of GAIN.
“We encourage people coming in cowboy wear,” she said. “It’s just really a lot of fun.”
This year, keynote speaker Jared Kleinert will talk to entrepreneurs about the importance of establishing genuine connections in business. The 20-year-old is the co-founder and co-author of “2 Billion Under 20,” a TED speaker and the founder of Kleinert Ventures, a marketing firm. He will be paid $10,000 to attend, May said.
She said the club has never paid for a keynote speaker at past shootout events. Instead, May would ask friends of hers to talk.
But May said she wanted Kleinert to come this year because younger entrepreneurs can identify with Kleinert, who is as young as most UF students.
Kleinert started his entrepreneurial path when he was 15 by trying to start his own business. He tried again at 16 before reaching out to two companies which focus on business and interpersonal communication.
“I like to say that I both successfully started and spectacularly failed my first two businesses at 15 and 16,” he said, and added the quicker a person can start learning and making connections, the more access and opportunities that person has to grow his or her career.
“Even though to many people I’m still very young, I now have five years of exponential work and connections and experience behind me,” he said.
The Shootout begins at 6 p.m. and an award dinner will be at 7 p.m., when the winner will be announced. Winners of the shootout will be awarded $7,000 in cash and prizes.
