Pitch night
You have been workshopping the idea alone, or with a chatbot. A pitch night is the room that tells you what is actually wrong with it. Here is the shape of the evening, and what happens to your application after you send it.
The evening
Times are local to the venue and can move by a few minutes. The page for your own date is the one that counts.
Five to eight minutes each, depending on the number of founders. No slides required.
Topics voted before the night; pick the table closest to what you are building.
What a pitch is here
You are not presenting to a panel. You explain what you are building to people who have built, and the clock is short on purpose — it forces the idea down to what it actually is. The exact length depends on how many founders present that night.
Table topics are published in advance and you vote on them, up to five per evening. At the event you pick the table closest to what you are working on, so the questions come from the right stage rather than from whoever happened to sit down.
A feedback round follows the pitches and the evening ends in open networking. The pitch is the way into the room, not the point of the evening.
Five stages, no black box — where your application goes and what you do at each one.
Your application stays attached to the evening you came from.