The Essentials of a “Pitch”
by Vijay Anand
1. The Ability to Connect
If the first four words arent able to convince me that this is a product or service that would interest me, the pitch has lost its audience right away.
2. Short and Conclusive.
Anything more than three lines to explain what it does, and then pause to see if there is more interest and continue with the details.
3. Energetic.
If you arent excited about what you are building, dont expect me to care.
4. Adaptive.
You have to know who you are pitching to. The pitch to a VC, to a Partner, or to an Employee, differs. Use the right tone, confidence level to win them over.
5. Lose the jargons.
When you are trying to convince someone, using phrases that they wouldnt understand, surely would kill the fun, wouldnt it?
Bonus:
6. Dont sell.
Desperation stinks. rather win them over. Loyalty starts with that first impression.
Great set of tips. Applies to all situations – we’re all pitching to someone at any given point of time.
These are great tips. I think if the guy is confident about his idea then most of these will automatically fall in place.
Hi,
I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be very good.. u write well.. Why don’t you popularize it more.. ur posts on ur blog took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;
BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run http://www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!
This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows..
Cheers,
Ray,
Thanks. I just havent been pushing much of my philosophy and writing mostly to keep my thoughts sane
But yep, if someone would find it useful, would be interested for sure.
Go ahead and link them if you would think they would benefit someone. I have no issues
Vijay
I attended delhi startup lunch few month back where few startup founders pitched their startups to potential employees.I learned few things from that event which I would like to share with here.
Your real pitch starts the moment you reveal yourself to the world.Your pitch is your happy customer,product,team, real world problem you are trying to solve.
Make sure I have access to whatver you have to show well before you make nay on stage pitch.Lively converstaion on your blogs, a upadted website,a cool podcast will do great help in making a educated decision.
If you are web x.0 startup show me the money. I am interested to know how easy is it to copy your idea, how many copycats alll ready exist and how you quicky are you looking to exit !! Drop eyeball count/alexa figures/five year plan for now.Tell me why i invest in you when no one is making real money on web. Great algorithm? A+ team?
customer list wo are maying you in $?
Be honest. Be original. We all hate marketing. We hate hard sellling even more.
Good luck to all startups.
-Satpal Parmar