Imagine this: you’ve just boarded a plane heading towards the next impact conference but you fear investors there are not ready to move away from the discussion about your venture’s “investment readiness”.
Or, you’re thousands of miles away from the conference because as an early-stage company, you simply cannot afford to fork out thousands of dollars to attend boring panel discussions with no opportunity to pitch your idea.
An alternative: Turkish Airlines, in effort to promote its country’s tech industry, is starting an Invest on Board program in partnership with Turkish startup accelerator Etohum to bring hand-picked pitch videos from startups to its business class passengers through in-seat televisions.
The initiative was revealed last week. Turkish Airlines has not officially announced the platform yet, but Invest on Board project manager Feray Uysal told travel news site Skift that they “will launch it soon, but the date is not certain now.”
Already, pitch videos from 11 startups (mostly in Turkish with English subtitles) are on the website, where entrepreneurs can apply to participate in the program. The ideas range from online dating to time banking services, suggesting an opportunity for social enterprises working in the tech space to participate. So far, the videos focus on the ideas themselves, without answering what the entrepreneurs need or how an investor might actually make an investment to the startups through this program.
Invest on Board is being marketed as a service to help busy investors find great startups all across the globe without the distractions of phone calls and meetings:
Or if the potential investor happens to be Kobe Bryant and Lionel Messi, without the distractions of championships and World Cups.
Photo from Turkish Airlines.