There was still some time before he had to meet up with Chen Yushan. He remembered the startup pitches President Gong mentioned, so he began walking to the conference room.
The presentations were held in a moderately sized lecture hall on the side of the conference center. Compared to the lively exhibition hall, the lecture hall was more professional and had a serious atmosphere.
When Lu Zhou walked into the conference room, he saw that 80% of the seats were taken. Most of the seats had a sign placed on a table in front of them, stating the name and company of the participant.
Lu Zhou looked around and saw that most of the people sitting here were large investment banks and venture capital executives, and there were also some angel investors.
Not everyone was allowed to pitch their project here.
The projects being presented here were much more sophisticated than the projects pitched to random investors in small meeting rooms.
All of the presenters here were from famous universities; an achievement such as winning a gold medal from the national mathematical modeling competition was nothing out of the ordinary.
Basically, all of the projects had the brains and talent, they just needed money!
Of course, even though these projects were the cherry-picked ones, that didn’t mean they were all going to be successful. Even if they received fundings from large international banks such as Softbank, not everyone’s company could become Uber.
Lu Zhou didn’t care about watching the next unicorn being funded, he was just here for the fun.
He sat down in the venue and took in the ambiance. He suddenly realized that this was similar to the academic conferences he had participated in. One person would present their PowerPoint, the audience would critique it, then the next person would walk onto the stage. However, there was something that felt different.
Lu Zhou felt like he was out of place.
While he was wondering why he felt out of place, a man in a suit sitting next to him was staring at him.
There was nothing weird about this. The man just felt that Lu Zhou looked familiar.
Lu Zhou noticed him and smiled.
“Can I help you?”
The man smiled and reached out his hand.
“Xiang Hongchuan, partner at Zhujiang Venture Capital, you are?”
Lu Zhou shook his hand.
“Just a university professor.”
This was an effective tactic.
Lu Zhou could clearly notice that after telling the man he was just a university professor, the man’s smile disappeared. The man made some small talk and ended the conversation.
From the man’s perspective, Lu Zhou was just a professor coming here to support their student’s pitch.
Lu Zhou was glad this guy didn’t disturb him any longer. He started to watch the performance on stage.
Correct, this was just entertainment for Lu Zhou.
These students were quite impressive, like President Gong said, the pitches were quite interesting.
Some guy took a drone on stage, and he was very straightforward as he talked about the future market prospects of civilian drones, and how his biggest competitor was DJI.
It was rare for a startup to have a real demonstrable product. Unfortunately, he didn’t clearly explain how he planned on taking the market share from DJI, nor did he make a good impression on the venture capital executives.
After the five-minute presentation, the venture capital investors asked some questions, which the presenter wasn’t able to answer clearly.
Lu Zhou looked at the depressed young man and couldn’t help but think of the Campus Assistant startup he made when he was in university.
Even to this day, plenty of Jin Ling University students were using the timetable software he made.
Should I support this young entrepreneur’s dream?
However, the university student on stage didn’t give Lu Zhou a chance. He couldn’t stand being embarrassed on stage, so he quickly walked away.
…
Twenty minutes went by.
This was Lu Zhou’s fifth PowerPoint.
He watched a young guy in his twenties walk on stage with his PowerPoint projected on the curtain behind him.
“Allow me to introduce myself, I am Li Tinghui. I graduated with an electrical engineering degree from Aurora University. I did my master’s in electric vehicle charging station design. The idea is to design a convenient and fast charging station. Then I was inspired when I was doing my internship at…”
He only had five minutes of allocated presentation time, yet he spent a minute talking about himself. The investors began to feel impatient.
The guy on stage finally began to talk about his idea, which was a “wireless charging station”.
Unfortunately, he missed his chance.
When it came to the venture capital world, they didn’t care about the origin story of the entrepreneur. They only cared about the market prospects and potential competitors of the product… More importantly, profitability.
The guy spent a minute talking about nonsense, so his project was doomed from the beginning.
It was obvious that Li Tinghui was a novice in the entrepreneurial field.
As expected, because he used too much time introducing himself, he didn’t have time to explain his project in detail at all. He skimmed through most of his 40-page PowerPoint.
But then again, it was his fault for making such a long PowerPoint for a 5-minute presentation.
It wasn’t like the investors cared about the charging station design drawings anyway. Not to mention that this guy was only a master’s student, once he received funding, they would hire a professional engineering team to design the product.
Was it possible for an entrepreneur to receive funding, purely due to their technology, not their business plan?
It was!
But one would at least have to be in the Changjiang Scholars Program or a professor at a famous university.
Moreover, they would also have to have the relevant technology patents and special support policies from the state.
The partner from Zhujiang Venture Capital, who was sitting next to Lu Zhou, shook his head and whispered to his colleague.
Lu Zhou was the only person who was interested in the PowerPoint, and he even paid attention to the design blueprints on the PowerPoint.
Being able to design a product like this as a master’s student was quite impressive. However, Lu Zhou could see some mistakes in the blueprints.
It was true that wireless charging would be a convenient technology.
After all, people would be interested in not having to plug and unplug the charging cable. If they could integrate this technology into parking spaces, it would be perfect.
However…
How does he plan on convincing other electric vehicle companies to implement a wireless charging compatible battery?
Is he going to make a battery himself?
That is ridiculous…
Wait a minute…
Lu Zhou’s eyebrows furrowed when he suddenly realized that Zhongshan New Materials, which was owned by Star Sky Technology, had begun producing lithium-sulfur batteries themselves.
He remembered Liu Wanshan from Zhongshan New Materials telling him this when they went hiking.
The staff member standing next to the podium notified Li Tinghui that his time was up.
Li Tinghui ended his speech with, “Our company will use the funding to purchase experimental equipment, and we’re looking at 5 million yuan from the first round of investment.”
Actually, his original financing goal was 10 million.
However, he knew in his mind that 10 million wasn’t possible.
The PowerPoint presentation was over. Now was the time for the Qu0026A session.
Just like he expected, not a single question was being asked.
Li Tinghui had an awkward and bitter expression on his face.
He knew he was going to fail, but he didn’t expect the investors to not ask a single question.
The staff member standing nearby knew that the investors weren’t interested.
However, the staff member still asked, “Is anyone interested in investing?”
Like he expected, no one spoke.
The staff member gave a look of encouragement to Li Tinghui and was about to ask him to get off the stage. However, a clear voice came from the back row.
“I’m investing.”
