Elevator Pitch and the best ROI - Pitching Hacks

“Summarize the company’s business on the back of a business card.” —Sequoia Capital. That is so much easier said than done.

I have read numerous articles, blog posts, and books on starting a startup. My compilation boils down to some iteration of these must-have components: Problem, Solution, (or solution first and then how the product/service fixes a problem), Competition, Business Model (how will the company make money), and Team. And, don’t forget the wrap up.   All of this in a pitch.

My initial thought: "Seriously?"

I attempted to write several renditions that would include the components – but none of them worked for me, so they sure as hell wouldn't (and haven't) worked for an investor. But there is hope… I found a PDF, Pitching Hacks by Nivi and Naval. Pitching Hacks cost me 9 bucks and it is the best money I have spent on Interlogues. A must read. Truly.

The advice is succinct, explicit, with examples that I could understand. I felt and still feel inspired to create a pitch that works. Note that Pitching Hacks contains a lot more information than just the elevator pitch, but right now that is the only topic that interests me.

Pitching Hacks starts with this: “Investors don’t invest in businesses. They invest in stories about businesses. You can tell a story in a sentence; you can tell a story in a paragraph; and you can tell a story in a 20-minute pitch. Startups need to do all three.” Thinking of the pitch in three parts helped me tremendously.

The one sentence pitch, which Nivi and Naval call a high-concept pitch, is a single sentence that distills your startup’s vision. This one-sentence is not necessarily the tag line. It could be, but doesn’t have to be. The PDF explains the difference and why – with examples.  This was an Aha! moment. 

Nivi and Naval go on to say that in the one paragraph pitch, expand on the high-concept pitch and provide a segue into the 20-minute one.

Once you have the opportunity to give the 20-minute pitch, include the major components which are: “traction, product, team, and social proof. And investors care about traction over everything else.”  Read the PDF to find out more about each compenent.

So far I have this for my high-concept pitch: Interlogues is a Behavioral GPS Mechanism with a Blogger-like functionality.

The sentence pitch starts like this: A tool that takes any person from point A, a habit that impedes their success, to point B, a habit that promotes their success. 

I am working on the rest. Yay!