Author: John Biggs / Source: TechCrunch Vitaly M. Golomb leads global investments at HP Tech Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Silic
Vitaly M. Golomb leads global investments at HP Tech Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Silicon Valley’s original startup and is the author of Accelerated Startup, a book about ramping up your business. Below is a fascinating excerpt from the book about Golomb’s favorite thing: pitching.
If you’ve ever seen me speak at an event, you have probably noticed that I get very excited and passionate about pitching. There’s an excellent reason for that. I believe that a great pitch is useful in so many walks of business. As the CEO of a company, you’ll be pitching your startup morning, noon and night. Short, 90-second elevator pitches. Three- to six-minute pitches as part of a demo day or a pitch competition. And finally, the Holy Grail: in a VC’s office, for a 30- to 60-minute explanation of what the future looks like, if you have anything to do about it. Becoming a truly great pitch artist takes a lot of practice, which I encourage you to invest time in. But that doesn’t mean that there’s any excuse for having a downright poor pitch.
First things first, what is a pitch? In my mind, it’s a narrative that ends in a specific call to action. You’re pitching because you want something from someone. Maybe you want their advice, their business or (in the context we’ll be focusing on here) their investment. Whatever you’ll be pitching for in the future, know that you’ve done many pitches for your business already. You probably pitched your friends, family and significant other to convince them that this crazy startup thing you’re about to embark on was a good idea. Maybe you pitched your old boss to let you work part time, or when you told him or her you were considering quitting your job.
The “call to action” part of the pitch is extremely important. If you’re including stuff in your pitch that doesn’t help build the case for your call to action, you should absolutely scrub it from the script. For example, a 90-second elevator pitch has the same purpose as the introductions we talked about in Chapter 28. The idea is to get a meeting. You don’t get a meeting by speaking extra fast and loading tons and tons of information into your pitch. You’re not trying to explain everything; you’re trying to share enough information to pique their curiosity and make them want to learn more.
Most pitches take place on a stage, of sorts. Not always a literal stage, but a stage nonetheless. Like everything delivered from a stage, your pitch is a performance. If your business is the most innovative thing on stage that day but you’re staring at your shoes, mumbling and reading from the slides… guess who won’t be getting a phone call.
As your company grows and evolves, you’ll probably get to do a number of three-minute pitches, as part of accelerator demo days, pitch competitions, and so on. The goal here is the same: get that meeting. But there are also a couple of other objectives. If you are part of a large, well-known accelerator, you’re probably a great startup, but you have a problem: you will be pitching alongside dozens, if not a hundred, other startups. They’ve all been prepped well. They all need to raise money. That means your goal changes: out of the hundreds of pitches your audience will sit through, you need to stand out enough that you’re remembered. When the investors go home at the end of the day, their notepads will have a ton of notes scribbled down on them. Your goal is to ensure that there’s a circle around your company’s name, and a dollar sign in the margin.
Think of every pitch you do as a competition. You’re pitching to win the grand prize in a competitive field. That means you need to be rehearsed, prepared, well rested and ready for battle. The prize, by the way? Yeah, that’s that meeting we were talking about. It is a little bit like winning a hot-dog eating competition, only to learn that the prize is a jumbo-sized hot dog, but trust me: it’s worth it. The meeting will include another pitch, this time about 20 minutes in length. If they like what they’re hearing and if there’s a good back-and-forth happening, the meeting will stretch to an hour.
So, what goes into the pitch, any pitch? First of all, you need to capture your audience’s attention. They have their phones in their hand, and they are probably checking Twitter and reading emails as they watch your pitch. If they hear something interesting halfway through your pitch and decide to start paying attention, they won’t have heard anything up to that point. That sucks for you, but it’s the reality of things. So, you need to lead with the one thing that will get their attention. The single most important part of your presentation: traction. How well is your company doing? How many users do you have? How fast are you growing? How much revenue are you generating? If your numbers are good, chances are that the investors will pay attention, even if they’re not immediately interested in your space. If someone is pitching something that is consistently growing at 50 percent per week,…
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