Sending submission to startup incubators and accelerators is an art form. I had the pleasure of being a judge on the admission panel of several incubators and I have seen a number of issues repeated over and over with how applications are completed. Although there are already many articles with practical advice on how to nail a submission, I list here my views expanding, reinforcing and sometimes negating those suggestions.

1. Make sure your company is actually a startup. This sounds fairly obvious, but actually one of the main roles of judges in early selection phases is to weed out all the non-startup submissions. If you are not sure about what a startup is, go read the seminal work of Paul Graham, Startup = Growth. If you are a regular pâtisserie, chances are that you will not be funded by a startup incubator.

2. Make sure that what you do is very clear. To be fair, this is not always possible. Sometimes understanding the value of a submission requires knowledge of a complex ecosystem, or of an existing technology that can be as fundamental as invisible (how many people can describe well a combustion engine or the plumbing in their bathroom?). But most of the times great startups can be described in 7 words or less. Regardless of what you do, make sure that what you do is understandable even by people who do not know your market well. And make it understandable quickly! There’s nothing worse than having to read through two paragraphs or watch 2 minutes of a video before hitting the sentence that makes everything clear (and should have been the intro).

3. If your application requires a video, pay attention to the basics of video making. It’s no secret that videos are a high bandwidth channel and are often the first thing a reviewer goes through in an application. This immediacy, that shouldn’t be confused with superficiality, can be enhanced by simply keeping in mind the basics that go into producing a video. Mind you – this is not about being Kubrick, most videos can be made enormously better with little additional care and cost. Pay attention to:

   a) message, which should be delivered confidently and spontaneously. People reading a script are extremely distracting because their lack of pathos and sincerity sounds uncanny. It’s ok to rehearse a few times, just don’t learn it by heart or you will sound like a child reciting a Christmas poem;

   b) light, because there’s nothing sadder than a poorly lit room;

   c) sound, which boils down to speaking close to the microphone and making sure the voice doesn’t sound louder or softer between scenes. Nowadays you can get a very decent wireless mic for $30;

   d) camera position and angle, because it’s ok to record from your laptop, but if you stand higher than your webcam it will be weird to watch you from below;

   e) [over-]editing, because you should keep it simple and not distract the viewer with excessive jumps or awkward pauses;

   f) size doesn’t matter, better a sweet 1-minute video than a 5 minutes video that makes your eyes bleed.

4. When it matters, go into details. It may appear to contradict the importance of being quickly understood, but the two things are complementary. Zooming into the details of your business shows confidence and helps the reader to buy into your vision little by little; I have found that a majority of winning applications often reach 200 words in the open fields that require extra care.

5. Never lie, but don’t be afraid to omit things that look obviously bad. This is Machiavelli 101. Your goal is to get people excited about your value proposition while keeping the amount of red flags as low as possible. Example: you have already raised $500k and you are applying to a minor incubator that offers only $30k and no other obvious advantage to your company. The field in the application is only asking how much you raised so far. If you specified also that you have raised from Y Combinator, a fund in Abu Dhabi, and a Startup Challenge in Taiwan, that would generate useless red flags.

6. Tell me something I don’t know, or keep your audience engaged. I recommend this especially to founders pitching a startup in a field somewhat obscure or very specific. For instance, you are describing a revolutionary automated irrigation system. Why not spend one sentence on the interesting phenomenon of water-stress in plants and its adverse effect on crops. This helps people understand the importance of your solution and makes your application memorable.

7. When they ask you what your most significant accomplishment was, try not to be obvious. Lately, most incubators/accelerator have a question like that. This is your chance to wow the audience. And consistently, most founders will fall into the trap and say that starting this company was the best thing they did or that graduating in rocket surgery was the thing they are most proud of. The point is that you should already be fairly confident in yourself and your startup by the time you’re applying. The answer doesn’t need to be strictly connected to the business you are pitching. It’s mostly about what kind of person you are and how you position yourself in the scheme of things. Try to be creative.

8. Don’t leave fields empty. If you specified you have a 4-year College Degree, then you shouldn’t leave the University Name field empty. I know that time is money and Busy is the origin of the word Business, but that’s just sloppy. If this application is really important to you, fill it out properly!

9. Assume your audience will only understand English. Normally you will not be judged by your use of language, especially if English is not your first language. But if you are applying to an international program, and that program happens to be, say, in a Portuguese speaking country, do not assume that your audience will speak Portuguese. This is especially true if your company has worldwide aspirations: the startup community is eminently international and English happens to be the lingua franca de facto. Enough with Latin!