Attendees at the Velocity Fall Fund Finals last November were shocked, shocked, when Suncayr didn’t walk home with one of the prizes. A member of the Velocity Science program (upon graduating from the University of Waterloo, they’ll enter the Velocity Foundry), Suncayr has developed a simple marker that can be used on the skin after applying sunscreen; when the marker turns purple, you know your sunscreen is no longer protecting against UV rays.
CEO Rachel Pautler knows why Suncayr didn’t win that day, and she also knows what goes into a killer pitch, because she learned the hard way. In this audio interview, Pautler explains just how bad Suncayr was at pitching when they first started. “We had no idea what we were doing,” she said.
Over time, and with the help of other startups in the Velocity program, Suncayr was able to learn what is required to pitch your company as a billion dollar idea. “In Velocity, the community is very much like, ‘try something’,” Pautler said. “‘If you do it wrong, we’ll tell you how to do it better next time.’ That’s fantastic for pitching and other things as well.”
Still, with Suncayr on track for a 2016 release of its innovative marker, Pautler wasn’t too beat up over missing out on an additional $25,000 in funding.
“We won the crowd, we won customers, and that’s more important at the end of the day,” she said.