Judges called her pitch “explosive”. Here’s how startup founder Amy Benson won the Melbourne Pitch

Last week, Diolog founder Amy Benson delivered a startup pitch that judges called “10 out-of 10”, “explosive”, and other great things. She was chosen as the winner of up to $100,000 in prizes and mentoring sessions. Here, she told SmartCompany a little bit more about Diolog, and also has tips for other early stage startups wanting to deliver that “explosive” pitch.

How did you spot the demand for your solution?

As an individual, or ‘retail’, investor myself, I was frustrated with the lack of communication I had with the companies I invested in. I found it difficult and time consuming to navigate multiple investor portals looking for announcements, share prices or contact details of listed companies.

Having had experience working in a venture capital firm, I was also aware of the fact that board members struggle to engage individual investors due to 1. a lack of time, 2. a lack of specific investor communication data and 3. having no technology to aggregate all investor communications.

You only have to look towards web3 investor communities to see a stark difference in investor engagement. Web3 investor engagement prioritises transparency, connectivity and most importantly, two-way communication.

Legacy investor relations practices in the market currently follow a one-way communication pattern where investors have little opportunity to reciprocate engagement. After hearing similar pain points from multiple public companies and investors, I realised there was an opportunity to introduce the world’s first two-way investor communication software.

People want to know they can have two-way communication with the businesses they invest in, trusting they will be listened to. This is why two-way communication is so important. Diolog is the real investor relations.

Our judges were extremely impressed with your pitch. How did you prepare and what is your advice for other early stage startups to get it right?

Honestly, I practised as much as possible. My goal was to get the pitch in front of as many people as I could before the Pitch night, especially those who had never heard the idea before. Presenting in front of others was the best way to understand the flow of the pitch, and gain valuable feedback ahead of the pitch night.

It’s important to remember you’re not constructing the pitch based on your own understanding of the startup idea, you’re constructing it for how the audience, or potential investor, might interpret it.

My advice would be to actively ask for hard feedback and hard questions! I asked my practise audiences to give me feedback on what specific words they didn’t understand, in which parts they might have lost interest, or what they thought was missing. Preparation is key and it’s better to work through hard feedback sooner rather than later.

What’s next for Diolog?

Diolog will commence our official market launch targeting ASX listed companies in April this year. In the meantime, we are working with our testing companies and early adopters to ensure the quality and rigour of the software ahead of our official launch.

The team is currently planning our product roadmap to incorporate features based on feedback from board members and individual investors, with a focus on making two-way communication easy and seamless for both users. In the future, Diolog will look to launch products for both listed and non-listed investor structures.

How will the AWS credits fit into your scale plan?

As Diolog is a mobile app and web software solution, we work closely with AWS to ensure our technology can scale reliably and securely.

The AWS credits will ensure we have a strong tech infrastructure and support to manage higher user traffic once we begin onboarding larger sized companies who have broader shareholder bases.