This is terrific all-around advice.<p>The last tidbit I would add is that if you don't get in this round, apply again. And then again. And again (don't use the same application / idea/ company each time). A single application is not going to 'make' your company. Perseverance and applied intelligence will.
I've reviewed a good number of applications this go around (last day to submit is Friday!). So I put together a quick write up that's hopefully helpful to the broader community.<p>Any other tips you'd suggest?
The beer-drinking robot is an example of an "Elevator Pitch". You definitely want an elevator pitch, also a tagline. The two while conceptually related are different.<p>Elevator pitch comes from the notion that you've just stepped onto an elevator along with some obviously wealthy person. Just to be polite she says "So what do you do?"<p>You have until she steps off at her floor to obtain financing for your company.<p>A tagline is typically used in written marketing materials - direct mail in my case, back in the day. Working Software's marketing director Mark Galvin and I were discussing taglines for QuickLetter 2.0. Mark is a brilliant marketing professional, rather shy, quiet and thoughtful, leading to my surprise when he emailed me:<p>"QuickLetter, only $49.95. C'mon - you'd spend more than that on dinner for two and a bottle of wine."<p>I'm working on some of my own projects right now. My complete inability to come up with appealing taglines and elevator pitches is definitely holding me back.<p>For reasons of Search Engine Optimization, it is advisable to compose an appealing tagline, then to place that tagline as the very first paragraph after your page's H1 element, also as the meta description element in the page's head element. Most of my own pages do that, with the result that I get a lot more search engine referrals. I discuss this in your detail at:<p><a href="http://www.warplife.com/tips/webmaster/search-engine-optimization/" rel="nofollow">http://www.warplife.com/tips/webmaster/search-engine-optimiz...</a>