About

Join us every 2nd Tuesday of the month for our online "Practice Pitch" bringing together our community of kingdom-minded entrepreneurs, investors, and support services. This event offers start-up companies seeking investment the opportunity to practice their pitch and receive valuable investor feedback. We include guest speakers each month bringing you relevant industry insights. Whether you're an entrepreneur, investor, or want to learn and connect with faith-aligned businesses, we invite you to join us online, learn, build meaningful relationships, and collaborate together. RSVP for our next event and view our library of video resources.

Practice Pitch Companies

TowniePro provides home services to the $219 billion home services market.  This includes window washing, home cleaning, power washing, senior care and services, landscaping and lawn care, home remediation, pest control, and more, and we are rolling up many of the independent providers and cross-selling services into clients.  TowniePro deploys the Multisided Platform Business Model (MPBM) that connects offers (home services professionals) with demand (home owners) through a robust technology stack, cloud-based SaaS platform.  We help individuals create businesses, provide ongoing instruction and direction to drive leads and integrate with key businesses processes that cultivate success, while helping homeowners find trusted professions for a host of services for or at their home.

There is currently at least 185 billion dollars of real estate equity tied up in US church buildings, 80% of which are in plateau or decline. What if we could help the church unlock that for mission?  Open Doors was specifically built to dramatically lower the real estate barriers to Church growth and unlock capital and access for church planting and missions in urban markets with high barriers of entry. Open Doors curates attractive and affordable facilities for multiple churches to share. When they don’t need the space, the facilities double as a missional opportunity for the local community through other uses. This enables churches to reduce their facilities budget by at least half, streamline their operations, add new sources of people flow, enjoy the benefits of a synergistic missional community and deploy their capital on mission.

Investor Pitch Feedback

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TowniePro

1. I really like the idea. I really like ideas that emulate cultural services.
2. One, it is very hard to find the right service provider when you need someone to do some things around the house.
3. You focused on how you beat the others that are similar to you.
4. I would emphasize that you are providing standards.
5. I think there is a lot of room to grow.   I don’t think the market has even begun to develop in these areas.
6. I like that you have a clear desire of a 10x return.
7. Focus more on differentiation and getting a stronger footprint with all of the other competition. ​​
8. Conceptually, really like. People are looking for trusted vendors.
9. Curious to see what a faith-based video integration looks like. What does that really mean, because that is a differentiator.
10. A little more clarity around the business plan would be helpful.
11. Hearing more of the faith-based integration in practice would be great. 
12. I had similar concern on how you are doing backend and franchises.
13. Are you trying to bring vendors and contractors to your service? Is it a push or a pull?
14. How does it present itself? We all know Chik-fil-A is a Christian company, but they don’t have a cross on the wall or get a tract with your sandwich. So how would they present their faith to the customer?
15. Is there a screening you go through before you enter into a relationship with the vendors?
16. There are a lot of cultural Christians. How do you ensure they are aligned with what you would define as a faith-based business? Partly to maintain the integrity of your model…
17. Do you offer insurance for liability?

Open Doors

1. Your previous background in the venture capital area, I think tremendously frames out for the investor.
2. I like that you state the problem up-front. Then I can mentally determine if I like it or don’t like it. I can let you know right away if I make an investment in that area.
3. I was a little confused as to whether it was buy-side or sell-side, if you will. Who is your customer? Would you go into big churches? Or do you focus on the small church?
4. I would spend more time on the financial slide.
5. We’ve seen the model around churches/school, book stores… You are adding a new level of multiple church tenants. Bringing the churches to work together is a challenge, but that success will br a blueprint in the future.
6. Perhaps a slide on that relationship of lenders and investors and the push/pull that happens between the two. 
7. You mentioned a couple examples of what you are supporting – maybe give a couple examples.
8. You mentioned getting close to going forward on your first project – can you shed light on that and its timeline. 
9. On the two pilots you have, can you describe the church?
10. Nick, great presentation – you really drew me in! I wrote down two different phrases that I loved. One, was, “Synergistic Missional Community”. Each one of those words captivated me. The other was, “Catalytic Missional Impact” – those were really great.
11. I like how you stated your mission statement very clearly and it drew people in. It helped anchor all of those phrases. It anchored me into your larger vision. 
12. You mentioned how Covid impacted your timeline and one of the pastors said that they can’t think about this right now. I would consider, since you are providing a facility with all of these services, solving those problems that the pastors have right now. They have to figure out how the church is going to operate in a Covid world. I think post-Covid, a lot of things will not be going back. Provide a capability for your churches to have a Zoom conferencing or virtual church. 

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Guest Speakers

Adie Akuffo-Afful is an aspiring ecosystem builder in the Upstate NY region. In his professional career has worked in the venture capital space first starting at Partech Partners in their Senegalese subsidiary and now jumping into the equity crowdfunding space with Wefunder, and American based Equity Crowdfunding platform. He holds an Entrepreneur In Residence position at the Urban League of Rochester in partnership with Jumpstarts and Key Bank. As well as sits on the board for a few Upstate NY startups and businesses.

Dave has spent several years at T-Mobile as a Senior Regional Trainer that trained and on-boarded new hires and managers for retail stores, trained executives around the country in new technology coming to the marketplace, trained the trainers for the entire company and was one of the few trainers who helped prepare employees for the launch of Visio (T-Mobile’s streaming television service)

Your Thoughts

"I thought it was a great event! Thank you so much for letting me be a part of it and present to your network. It is a really great ministry you are offering."

About Adie: "His passion and excitement is contagious and fun."

About Dave: "I really enjoyed learning about the new technologies and some of the differentiators in the 5G offering."

"I like the honest feedbacks from each feedback."

About Adie: "I found the platform and model very impressive. It was simple and concise."

About Dave: "Very educational for me. I leaned a lot!!"

"I like the small group interaction. It was open and free flowing."

"Wow. This was my first time. I found it very warm. The investors... at least those I thought were investors were very simple, humbled and inviting. I would like to become a regular or member."

"It may be helpful to periodically bring in alums to share their testimonies."

About Adie: "Fascinating and cutting edge . So good for us to hear about and be schooled in. Speaker was winsome and articulate."

About Open Doors: "Very persuasive, concise, pulled together both the compelling story and mission aspect as well as rationale and investment opportunity and the opportunity gap it is addressing. Excellent!"

"Great to see the broadening audience and to reconnect via chat with those I've met before."

"Such a pleasure to be in the company of so many faithful, positive, grateful followers of the Savior. Thank you for setting up such an important, Kingdom building organization. Look forward to contributing."

"Adie did a great job in the limited time frame. His breakout session was very informative."