Increase Your Chances to Be Matched by Ignite

Being matched with corporates and public organizations is crucial for startups to learn how to develop their market offering and get their first customer.

Ignite’s Branding & Content Marketing Coach, Carin Lagerstedt, shares all the key things to consider if you want to increase the chances to get more meetings with potential B2B and B2G customers through our initiative.

Understand How Ignite Searches for Startups

There are currently more than 2,400 startups on Ignite Magic’s database. A best practice company profile is key to standing out among this enormous number of profiles.

Our starting point when searching for startups is always the needs and challenges of the participating corporates and public organizations. Prior to any matchmaking, we conduct a needs assessment with them to find out their pain points and innovation challenges.

The team searches for relevant startups both manually (e.g. reading the profiles of the companies that applied for a specific event) and with an AI tool called Miss Magic that goes through all the profiles in our database to find the startups that match relevant keywords. It is therefore important that your startup profile includes these keywords in both your short and long descriptions. Try including the words that the corporates, who are neither experts in your domain nor used to the way you describe your solution, would use to describe their challenge and what they are looking for.

Both our team and your potential customers should easily and quickly understand why your solution is a good match. Therefore, a best practice profile should aim to answer the following questions:

• Why does what you do matter?
• What results and/or pain points does it accelerate or solve?
• What do you offer? What is the technology behind it and/or the solution it is built on?
• Who does your offering make a difference for? (i.e. the typical customer or industry where your technology or solution is applied) What do your customers have in common? It is important to inspire them with specific examples and not be too generic.

Last but not least, don’t forget to keep your company information up to date. Remember to regularly update information regarding team size, last completed investment, turnover, solution maturity, etc. All this information is taken into consideration when our team and the organizations decide if your startup is a good match.

Create Website Content That Helps Matchmaking Decisions

The information you provide on your website can also influence a matchmaking decision.

When shortlisting startups for corporates and public organizations, our team will always check out your website to make sure that what you do has the potential to solve their innovation challenges. The same will be done by their representatives when deciding whether to meet you or not.

This is why describing what relevant knowledge and insights you can share with partners and customers is key to driving interest in your startup.

Make sure to include this key information on your website:

• Explain what you offer and why it matters in a snackable format. Make it easy to understand the reasons for buying your solution and how it is unique or different from other alternatives.
• Give a taste of your area of expertise. Indicate from a wider perspective what your unique domain knowledge is about in order to make it relatable for someone who is unaware of your solution or has little insight on the topic.
• Use case studies or helpful examples. Think of ways to illustrate a business case that shows the outcome of using your solution.

Remember that the people who visit your website for the first time want to know they are in the right place and what benefits your business will provide for them. Once you have caught their initial interest, your main goal should be to make it easy for them to identify the reasons why taking the next step is worthwhile, i.e. filling out a form or confirming a match with your startup.

About Carin Lagerstedt

Carin Lagerstedt is one of our coaches at Ignite with a focus on branding and B2B marketing within technical and industrial solutions.
She is currently working as CMO at Strainlabs with their innovative IoT bolts for predictive maintenance and mechanical insights. Together with the startup, she has participated in several matchmaking events arranged by Ignite where she had the chance to meet 10 corporations.
Carin has a track record in enabling efficient sales growth with digital content marketing – whilst building a thought leadership position in the process.