Where the next big thing can get a lift off the ground

Investors, entrepreneurs find new places to connect

Diego Rey of Geneweave Biosciences (left) made his pitch to venture capitalist Brian Hirsch of Greenhill SAVP at a Peak Pitch event in Windham, N.Y. (Hans Pennink for the boston globe via associated press)

WINDHAM, N.Y. - At the top of the D chairlift at Windham Mountain, no one was talking about the 2,000-foot trip to the bottom or the ski conditions. It was all about interfaces, revenue streams, and business plans.

For a day, the mountain had turned corporate boardroom, with aspiring moguls pitching their electronic-security technology or efficient oil filters to investors on the ride up the chairlift before racing to the bottom to do it again.

It used to be that entrepreneurs went to investors begging for money, but the pressure to buy a piece of the next big thing now has some investors getting creative, holding what amount to open casting calls for start-ups. Investors and lawyers held a pair of such events in New York and Vermont earlier this month, Peak Pitch - a day of skiing where venture capitalists and entrepreneurs got lots of one-on-one time in an environment that demanded concision.

"What's great about being bundled up against the cold and having on gloves and goggles is you really have to hone your pitch down; you can't depend on charts," said Phil Ferneau, managing director at Borealis Ventures in New Hampshire, which held the first Peak Pitch three years ago. "Boil it down to something you can understand through bit ing wind and a facemask."

As the Web has decreased start-up costs for technology companies and shrunk the time it takes to turn an idea into a business, events created in the same spirit as Peak Pitch - more often held in hotel ballrooms or conference centers - give investors a look at ideas, sometimes in their most nascent stage.

The January MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association based on data from Thomson Financial found that the number of seed stage deals by venture capitalists increased, from 342 in 2006 to 415 in 2007. Investing so early is risky but holds the potential of a bigger return. And, since many venture firms have raised new funds over the last two years, according to Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, there is a demand for new ideas.

"What we were generally finding is there's a lot of difficulty in the current market in terms of a firm standing out and seeing top-tier deals - so to a great extent, a big drive for us was creating a brand to get decent plans and to also put a name out there, that we work with people very early," said Mark Modzelewski of investment firm Bang Ventures in Cambridge, which launched a "You Be the VC" contest last year that uses "American Idol" tactics to look for the next big idea.

Events that bring a range of new entrepreneurs onto investors' radar screens also foster the mingling that occurs naturally in Silicon Valley, where the entrepreneurial community regularly socializes. Peak Pitch offered a distinctly New England twist.

"The first ride up was a little bit of a warm-up . . . you get an idea of how long the ride is, drill down into your revenue model," said William DeLuca, who is building YingYang.com, a website that lets people catalogue the stuff they own and share it online with friends. "This is my first official pitch not to friends and family."

But it doesn't take a ski slope to open the door for entrepreneurs.

Y Combinator in Cambridge, for instance, makes small investments and provides support services to companies chosen through an open application process. Successful entrepreneurs move to Cambridge or Silicon Valley and receive support services, networking opportunities, and thousands - not millions - of dollars. Y Combinator typically takes a 6 percent share of the company.

"Anyone can apply; you don't have to know us, and you don't have to have success in the past or any kind of credentials," said Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston. "We whittle down the list to 50 start-ups we're interested in interviewing, we interview them all in one weekend for 10 minutes each, and . . . that Sunday night, we get back to everyone."

Other organizations, such as TechStars in Boulder, Seedcamp in London, and LaunchBox Digital in Washington, D.C., take a similar approach.

Bang Ventures' "You Be the VC" contest offers a similar reward - a stipend for living expenses and a suite of other services - but tries to democratize the process further. A panel of judges including a Google executive, successful entrepreneurs, and Curt Schilling winnows the field, but ultimately the public votes on YouTube videos to select the entrepreneur who receives funding and support to turn their idea into a company this summer.

"In a way, it's opening up the process," Modzelewski said. "It doesn't generally take a lot of money to fund those companies, so you have to get in early if you want to be there, and the biggest detriment those companies have is - how do they get known."

But even as budding entrepreneurs find less intimidating ways to connect with venture capitalists, they may just be trading one kind of risk for another.

Nirav Patel of custom-embroidery company Threadsmith.com crammed for last year's Peak Pitch by taking ski lessons. Patel pitched the company to Scott Murphy, a novice skier from Advantage Capital Partners, on the lift. But on the trip down, when Murphy took a spill, Patel - who had not mastered stopping - careened past.

As he left with an injured shoulder, Murphy gave the company a fake $1 million check, and this year, the experience paid off when Murphy's firm joined other investors to make a real $1 million investment in Threadsmith.

This year, the Threadsmith team stayed in the lodge.

"We have to launch our product in May," Patel said. "And we cannot risk getting hurt."

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.