After about a year in OEN, I finally felt ready to pitch my idea to the crowd and was lucky enough to make it to the So You Think You Can Pitch competition on August 12.

I've spoken in front of many groups, so I wasn't too nervous about that, but I was nervous that we might come across wrong and be dismissed as not "legitimate" for one reason or another.

However, even though we only had 5 minutes to tell our story and certainly made a few mistakes, I feel like we were able to get our point across.

I've always felt that our story of creating electricity with human power is great, and that it's only a matter of execution to bring our vision to life, I have found that it's definitely hard to figure out exactly how to make a lot of money on it.  That was the main question the judges had - "what's the best business model?".

We got second place, which was fine with me, but the best part about it is we got an introduction to the three judges present, and have been able to schedule a meeting with one of them so far.

Ultimately, our goal of presenting our idea to the OEN community, getting contacts, and hearing feedback was met, and now it's just a matter of continuing the process.

The venture capital or angel investor pitch process is still a mystery to me - there seems to be a process, but It's certainly not the same for everybody.  Is it meeting the right person?  Coming up with the right mathematical formula that shows how we'll make a guaranteed billion dollars? or just hanging in there until you get to the point where you don't need the money?

We'll see, and I am enjoying the process, so I look forward to the next chance to pitch our idea.