PULTEVENT
Pitch competition audience voting: 7 formats for demo days and startup stages
Demo day at an accelerator, six o'clock, the third hour of pitches. Nine startups have had five minutes each, the jury is conferring in a side room, and the audience of mentors, alumni and a few actual investors is getting restless. Then the host opens the audience round. Everyone in the hall has a stack of virtual capital on their phone, and for four minutes the LED wall turns into a race, bars climbing, positions swapping, a medtech team two places behind with a minute to go.
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Audience choice at a pitch event usually means clapping or a quick show of hands, and both are decided by whoever brought the most friends. Virtual capital is harder to game. Each attendee gets the same amount, has to decide how to spread it, and the winner is the startup that collected the most money in total, not the one with the loudest fan club.
PULTEVENT does this with the Investor mechanic in the Forum interactive section. The audience scans a QR code or follows a link and plays in the phone browser, no app, no account. The organiser controls the round from a laptop and the Investor Live screen shows the totals on a projector or LED wall. The server counts in real time, so the hall needs a working internet connection on phones and laptop.
7 pitch competition formats with an audience round
1 Audience award alongside the jury
The jury picks the main winner behind closed doors; the hall invests virtual capital for a separate audience award. Both are announced on stage, audience first.
How to run it. Open the round while the jury deliberates. It fills the dead time that usually kills the energy at demo days.
Founders get two chances to win, and the audience has a reason to stay for the results.
2 Round-by-round heats
Twelve startups in three heats of four. After each heat the audience invests, and the top one or two from each heat go to the final.
How to run it. Create a separate round per heat with only that heat's startups on the cards, so nobody invests in a team from the morning.
Long demo days get a structure and a reason to watch every heat.
3 Grand final with a live race
Three finalists, one last pitch each, then one open round with the Investor Live screen on the main wall. The host commentates the race like a sports finish.
How to run it. Keep the host's microphone live during the round and let them call out overtakes as they happen.
It's the most photographed moment of the day, and it ends the event on a high.
4 Combined score
The final ranking is the jury score plus the audience result, with a weighting announced at the start. The audience round supplies one half of the formula.
How to run it. Publish the weighting before the first pitch. Changing it afterwards is the fastest way to upset founders.
Expert judgement and market appetite both count, which founders tend to see as fair.
5 Corporate venture day
A large company invites startups to pitch solutions to its own problems. Business unit heads and staff in the hall invest capital named after the company's own fund.
How to run it. Show a short internal problem statement before each track so people invest with the company's needs in mind.
The corporate team sees which solutions have internal support before the pilot budget is discussed.
6 Student and university startup contest
Student teams pitch to faculty, alumni and partners. Everyone in the hall gets the same capital, including the teams' classmates.
How to run it. Ask teams not to invest in themselves, and say it on stage. It's a matter of honour, and it usually works.
Students learn that support has to be won across the whole room, not just among friends.
7 Pitch and re-pitch
Round one after the pitches. Then each startup gets sixty seconds to answer the audience's doubts, and the audience can move their capital before the round closes.
How to run it. Keep the Investor Live screen visible during the re-pitches. Founders pitch harder when they can see the money moving.
It rewards founders who can handle objections, which is exactly what real investors look for.
Startup cards
Each startup gets a card with its name, a one-line description and its logo or product shot.
Capital, not clicks
Everyone receives the same capital, 100 by default. How they spread it says more than a single vote.
Locked at the bell
Allocations can be changed until the round closes. After that the result can't be touched.
Totals decide
The ranking is by total capital. The count of backers is visible but doesn't decide the winner.
Rules to announce before the first pitch
How much capital each attendee has and what it's called. Whether it has to be spent in full. When the round opens and when it closes. Whether founders and their teams may invest. How a tie is broken. That the winner is decided by total capital, with the number of backers shown only for information. Put these on a slide and read them out. Five sentences on stage save an hour of disputes at the drinks reception.
Preparing the startup cards
Collect a name, a one-sentence description and one image from every team a few days before. Use the same kind of image for everyone: all logos or all product shots. A team with a striking photo next to eight teams with plain logos gets an unfair advantage that has nothing to do with the pitch.
Check the spelling of every name with the founders. It sounds trivial until a team's name is wrong on the biggest screen of their year.
On the day
Put the QR code on screen during the first break so people are connected before the first round. Explain the phone screen once: the startup cards, the plus and minus buttons, the quick +10, +25 and +50, the counter of what's left, and the Confirm step with the summary. Run the stage view on the main wall and keep the control panel on the tech desk. And close the round on time, out loud, so late arrivals know why their phone no longer accepts changes.
Keeping it fair
Each phone gets one wallet, and the server blocks attempts to open a second. Allocations can be changed until the round closes, then they are fixed. If a phone loses signal, it returns to the same round with its investments in place. It all works in the normal browser on iOS and Android, as long as there is internet on the phones and the control laptop.
Your branding, your currency
Accelerators and corporate funds usually want the audience round to look like their own. The organiser can change the logo, colours, background, the names of the mechanic and its buttons, and the currency itself, all from the control panel without a developer.
Rehearse before demo day
The demo gives 72 hours free, with no card, which is enough to load last year's startups as test cards and run a round with your team. For the real event there's a monthly plan or a one-time payment for lifetime access to every section. See pultevent.ru/en for prices.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who hosts forums, industry conferences and corporate events, and has run over 500 events since 2014: best host of Moscow 2024 and of Saint Petersburg 2023 at the TOP 100 Awards. He built it for his own stages first. The rest is at pultevent.ru/en.
How to run audience voting at a pitch competition
- 1
Collect a name, a one-line description and an image from every startup.
- 2
Create the investment round, set the capital and name the currency.
- 3
Publish the rules: who may invest, when the round closes, how ties are broken.
- 4
Show the QR code in the first break and explain the phone screen once.
- 5
Open the round after the pitches and run Investor Live on the main wall.
- 6
Close the round on time, announce the ranking and export the results for the report.
FAQ
Can founders invest in their own startup?
Can the audience change allocations after a re-pitch?
What decides the winner, money or number of backers?
Can we combine the result with a jury score?
Does the audience need an app?
Can the screen carry our accelerator's branding?
See also
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