7 million yen was spent on a high school student's presentation

hayabusaracing2025
Jul 24
3 min read

This presentation appeals neither to reason nor emotion, and it is puzzling why anyone would support such a team.

That was the start of our fundraising presentation for CHANGE HOLDIGNS Hayabusa Racing. It was not a pleasant presentation, but we gradually improved throughout the year, and now wherever we go we hear comments like, "That was a great presentation."

In addition, the team of nine people (six and three high school students) was able to raise nearly 7 million yen in total for the STEM RACING competition to be held in Singapore this September ( more details here ).

Of course, they were high school students, they were taking on a challenge, and they were lucky, but the amount of people who listened to their presentations and said "I'd love to support you" was overwhelmingly different between the beginning and the end. In fact, the majority of sponsors were acquired after 2025.

Here I will explain in simple terms how we were able to make our presentations "good," so that even I, who made terrible presentations in the past, can understand.

"So, what happened?"

What I struggled with the most was not the presentation itself, but the part before it. Even though I made improvements to the presentation while receiving various pieces of advice, and made it look better, I still didn't feel like it was hitting the mark.

The presentation was structured as follows:

What is STEM Racing that we are participating in?
Our past activities
Why we can be the best in the world
Benefits of becoming a sponsor
Request for support

This is the typical structure of a presentation, but I didn’t realize the biggest problem:

When the other party says, "Wow, that's an impressive project. So, what happened?" I can't say anything.

It was only natural that people would think it didn't really matter whether our activities were successful or not.

Presentation = Love Letter

I realized this when someone gave me some advice about a presentation.

A pitch is like a love letter.

That's when I was told.

What this means:

We need to "make the other person sympathize with us with our passion" and at the same time "rationally explain why they should support us." I've never written a love letter, but it seems to be the same principle. Both love and reason need to be combined.

So what I started doing was telling the story of why I was here: about how I was frustrated after losing last year, how there were no F1 fans at my school and so I couldn't start a team, and how I'd worked hard on research and development within a limited budget up to that point.

Then, all of a sudden, more people actually listened to our presentations. More people listened and wanted to support us. But this was where the real challenge of gaining sponsors began.

Inventing a reason when there is none

Originally, our team's goal was simply to become the best in the world. However, there was no benefit to anyone in helping some unknown student become the best in the world. So, we had to somehow come up with a reason.

Up until that point, we had been vaguely aware of the problem: it was difficult to find students like us.

So we changed our team's "vision."

Rather than just becoming the best in the world, I want to see many teams from Japan that can become the best in the world. If we can produce many teams where students take the lead in gathering sponsors and developing cars, like overseas, I think Japan's future will be bright.

By doing this, your activities suddenly have a reason to support them. A noble cause, perhaps.

We restructured our presentation around this, and in the end, it came out like this:

The experience of losing at the world championships two years ago
What exactly is this tournament?
- Why is this tournament unique?
The gap between Japan and the rest of the world that I felt after losing in the tournament
What Japan is lacking at the tournament
How can we make up for what is lacking in Japan?
In the process, we aim to be number one in the world
Benefits of becoming a sponsor