Guidewire Group

Last week, Guidewire Group  kicked off the Innovate 2010 program with Pitch Slam events in Zaragoza and Madrid.  In all, 22 companies presented their businesses in our fast-paced, 5-minute format designed to quickly tease out a company’s market opportunity, unique differentiation, and execution against plans.  As company’s pitch the business, our esteemed judges evaluate the startups using our G/Score methodology.

To refresh your memory, the G/Score is an assessment of a company’s business opportunity and market traction at a point in time. The seven-factor score looks at overall concept, market opportunity and challenges, product and business execution, team and business model.  The G/Score is not intended to be a predictor of success or to be a substitute for diligence.  It is a gauge of potential and performance.

Since introducing the G/Score (first privately to hundreds of executives and entrepreneurs and then publicly earlier this year), we’ve been asked a lot of questions, as you would expect, about the efficacy of the G/Score.  Is it “accurate”?  Does it successfully predict winners?  And perhaps the most incredulous one: How can you judge a company in just 5 minutes?!

In a world as fraught with execution risk, hard work and luck, it’s difficult to know what “accurate” might mean in the context of a startup business.  The G/Score isn’t a measure like weight or height that can be compared to an absolute scale.  Startups have no absolute scale.  But the G/Score does accurately assesses where a company is today.  At what stage is product development?  How complete is the team?

Does this accurate assessment predict success? I’d argue that the G/Score is an assessment of potential.  Continued execution on the business, smart reaction to the market, and a commitment to product excellent drive success.

Most importantly, it turns out, The G/Score provides a common language and a foundation for constructive conversations between entrepreneurs and the marketplace.  And that’s what makes the G/Score a valuable tool in assessing companies in 5-minute Pitch Slams or in hour-long one-on-one meetings.

Every day, startups submit their businesses to quick judgment from investors, customers, potential partners.  They do it at events like the Innovate!2010 Pitch Slams, at conferences, competitions, and meetups.  Often, the judging criteria is little more than a gut feeling and a wet finger int he air.

What we’ve found in just a very short time is that the G/Score gives a judging panel – and ultimately with the people who are in a position to invest, partner, and otherwise support these young companies – a standardized way of thinking about a company that supplements instincts and directs the conversation to a productive and constructive dialog about the business.

Over the course of two Pitch Slam events in Spain, the quality of comments and questions put forward by the judges and audience was substantive to the company’s position and traction in the market.  Gone were the pot shots and gut feelings that are so often center stage when “experts” sit in public judgment of startups, and along with it the defensiveness that entrepreneurs often project when they’re under the spotlight of such random scrutiny.

In short, the G/Score worked to change the tenor of the dialog and every startup, whether top scoring or newly rising, could take away valuable feedback and constructive advice from the judging panel.

As you might expect, not every company has perfect pitch.  So another key learning from the evening is that entrepreneurs must continually fine-tune their company presentations, and if they tune to the G/Score, we believe they will be communicating more effectively the potential and execution excellence of their companies.

Guidewire Group strives to make the G/Score methodology and criteria transparent so that entrepreneurs understand clearly how they are being assessed.  We provide training videos that describe the score and provide advice on how to present a company for the purpose of being scored. Use these materials to hone your own business presentation, whether you’re pitching for a G/Score or selling your first products.

By tuning into the G/Score, you are stating clearly and as objectively (at least as objectively as a thing as tenuous as a startup can be) what your business is all about, how you will win the market, your commitment to technology and business execution, and the team that will drive your success.