Jun 27, 2024

How to make a great video for your LaunchX application

Application Advice

There’s a reason why our team loves the video/presentation portion of the LaunchX application, it's the perfect opportunity for our applicants to showcase themselves with their own flair! While there are many ways to create a video, we have shared some ideas below to help you get started!

Brainstorming

Before you even start recording the video, you should take some time to reflect on who you are. You can create a mindmap to help you further visualize who you are.

Are you someone like our alum Molly whose passion for education led to her co-founding Girl Tech Boss – a company that cultivates the STEM and entrepreneurship spirit in female and non-binary students?

Or are you a problem solver who wants to solve problems like providing more affordable and accessible health care to cardiac patients like our other alum Andre is working on as the co-founder and CEO of Helpwear Inc.

Take some time to reflect on your identity and use your thinking to answer the video prompt, how do you want to leverage your skills, mindset, and experience to make an impact in the world? And, why are you the one to do it?

Consider aspects of your mindset, skills, and experience. Use these ideas to back up the claim of why you be able to make an impact.

With the video, the LaunchX team wants to know that you are a person of passion and action with the ability to make a meaningful impact in the world as an entrepreneur.

Planning

After you have had the time to reflect on your identity, it's time to write your script! There are many ways to plan for a successful video, but here is a basic outline to get you started:

Introduction/hook
Highlight of Goals/Skills/Activities
Closing

Introduction

Starting your video with an introduction and a hook is always a good idea. There are different types of hooks, but a hook can be an interesting fact or statement about you.

Here are two examples of hooks some of our alum have used –

Alan’s hook was” In the 20th century alone tobacco caused 100 million deaths, more than the combined deaths of World War 1 and World War 2…”
Katie’s hook was “Since I was 5 I have kept an idea notebook…”

Goals/Skills/Activities

After you have planned your hook, then you can plan the direction you would like to take in your video. You can now plan what you would like to highlight from your hook. What sort of experiences may provide evidence for your hook?

It may be helpful to look at the activities section in your application to identify which activities you want to highlight further. Take this opportunity to “give life” to the activities you listed in your application. We want to learn more about all the great things you have been involved in!

Going back to Alan’s example. He wanted to highlight the work he did as an intern that helped to educate tobacco users about the health consequences of using tobacco, which then led to him creating an app to connect Alzheimer's caregivers to help cultivate a supportive community.

While Katie shared some of her bucket list ventures she has completed, such as developing and designing an app design and development course for the Boys and Girls Club.

Closing

The last part of your video is your closing. While there are many ways to approach this, here are some suggestions.

You might use this time to bring your experiences together. What did you learn from your

Experiences? Katie shared that through her bucket list, she has become a leader, developer, activist, and entrepreneur.

Or you might share what dreams you might have. Alan shared that he wants to help millions of lives and believes that he would be able to make more of an impact as a Launchie.

Practice

Now that you have planned out your script, it’s time to practice! A helpful tip may be to condense your written scripts into bullet points. What do you want to talk about in your video, and what do you want to highlight? By writing bullet points, you may reduce the natural inclination to read directly from your script.

You can practice with your family! You can practice with your friends! You can even practice with your pet!

Record

Now that you have practiced, it is time to record! You can record your video on your phone or a webcam. Make sure your room is bright enough so we can see you! Don’t be afraid to do a few takes! Feel free to show any props. Do you have a model you can show, or do you have pictures of some of your work?

Optional

Once you record your video, you can edit your video to add some additional elements. This is not required – your video will not be negatively impacted if you do not edit it. Some free video-making/editing software include Canva, Youtube Studio, Microsoft ClipChamp (free for those with a Microsoft subscription), or iMovie (free for those with an Apple device).

What are the requirements for the video portion?

For the video submission, you must ensure that your video is 30-60 seconds long. Essentially, we want you to pitch yourselves to the LaunchX team. We know this is a short amount of time, but this is great practice for what we call an elevator pitch, which many entrepreneurs use to share their ideas.

You’ll also need to upload your video to a host. We recommend YouTube so you can make your video unlisted to ensure that only the LaunchX team can view your video.

Test your video

It would be terrible to go through all of that work to create your video and then the LaunchX team not be able to view it! To ensure other people can access your video, you can open a private browsing window and paste your link in to see if it still plays.

Or share it with a friend or family member to have them test it on their device. This can be an excellent chance for any final feedback too!

Upload your video

Congratulations! You made it to the last step. Once you are done, copy the share URL link and paste it into your application. We can’t wait to see your video!