The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation did something on Saturday it’s never done before – it held a second bootcamp for the participants of its Breakthru competition.

The 12 semifinalists for the startup competition – which will award $1 million in prizes on March 23 – assembled in Fredericton for a focused day of mentorship on pitching, fundraising and value proposition. It followed an initial bootcamp late last year. 

Marcus Daniels, the Founding Partner of Toronto pre-seed venture capital fund Highline BETA, spent much of the day discussing early-stage fundraising and perfecting pitches and slide decks. And Kent Murphy, Vice-President of Program Operations at Atlantic Growth Solutions, delved into value propositions, and explained how to present them to sales leads.

A highlight of the NBIF calendar, Breakthru is the innovation agency’s flagship competition, held every second year. It aims to bring entrepreneurs into the startup community and usher them through the early stages of starting a business.  The competition has always featured a bootcamp for participants, but NBIF added a second event this year to increase the mentorship component.

“I’m impressed with the participants,” said Daniels in a break at the bootcamp. “It’s Saturday morning and everyone is here excited to be working on their projects.”

Calling it “a smorgasbord of ideas”, he said he was pleased with the diversity of ideas and the enthusiasm of the participants.

Daniels, who has made 37 investments and had 14 exits, delved into what investors look for in companies, especially in early-stage companies working on their earlier rounds of funding.  He stressed the importance of founders building up credibility among investors, and said the founders themselves are critical in investment decisions.

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“I value the team at about 50 percent at this stage of the company,” he said, in explaining the weighting of the investment decision. “The team is going to make or break the company.

Murphy, whose New Brunswick-based consultancy, demonstrated how to determine a company’s value proposition, whether it’s an ability to increase sales, save money or reduce risk. And he showed how to present a value proposition and who to target.

“A value proposition is a tangible result of what the customer gets when they use your product or service,” said Murphy. And the most important term in this is ‘tangible result’.”

A common theme in both Daniels’ and Murphy’s presentations is they both called for clarity, precision and brevity. Daniels stressed the importance of slide decks that have economical language, adding that most slides should present just one major idea.

And Murphy told the participants to use language appropriate to the target audience. “If you’re going after business development people, tech-speak just doesn’t work,” he said. “You have to describe the problem you solve in one sentence that people understand.”

Some 61 companies entered Breakthru this year, and the organizers have whittled the pool of participants down to 12. NBIF will announce a handful of finalists in late February. Prizes will be awarded live at the award dinner on March 23 at the Fredericton Convention Centre.

NBIF will award $750,000 in cash and in-kind services to the top three New Brunswick companies. And for the first time it will set aside $250,000 for a company from other parts of Canada that wants to set up base in New Brunswick.