Perfecting the one-sentence pitch

One sentence pitch competitions used to be ubiquitous in the early tech startup days. It’s been a long time now since I’ve seen one, but being able to communicate your product offering and solution quickly and easily (in a sentence or two) remains an important skill for new founders.

As memories are short in the tech world, maybe it’s time to bring these pitch competitions back. For an important reason — nailing a perfect one-sentence pitch is more than just something that’s fun to do for a competition or as a communications exercise. Developing this one sentence value statement forces you to be very specific about four things: your defined offering, audience, the problem your solving and how you are going to do it. Many times, at the early stage startups are too vague in how they approach each of these characteristics. Use this tool as a way to identify refine, and identify your goal and unique value and to keep you on track as your company grows.

Why a one-sentence pitch?

It’s been popularly argued that the average human attention span is 8 seconds. While the accuracy of these statistics are debatable, here’s a statistic that might be more convincing: last year, smartphone users had the choice to download between 2.6 million Android, and 2.2 million iOS apps. With thousands of offerings released everyday, communicating your unique value to prospective users and investors quickly and efficiently is integrally important. Top investors receive thousands of inbound leads on new startups each year. You might not have the chance to make a second impression. It’s hard enough to stand out as a startup in that landscape, so once you have your audience’s attention, you want to be sure that the message you are sending is the right one.

How to write the perfect one-sentence pitch

Back in the early 2010’s the Founder Institute developed a one-sentence pitch template that became the basis of many of those vying for the judges (& their customer’s) attention:

“My company, _(insert name of company)_, is developing _(a defined offering)_ to help _(a defined audience)_ _(solve a problem)_ with _(secret sauce)_”.

Defined offering: Website? App? Hardware? This should be able to be understood by all.

Defined audience: Who will benefit?

Problem: Think of the bigger picture here, your underlying purpose.

Secret Sauce: special quality or feature in the success (see How to Make a Good Secret Sauce)

Writing this sentence is often a lot harder than it looks. But done successfully, this template helps build a pitch that is simple, accurate and concise. You can think of these four elements as the backbone of your startup, it identifies what makes your solution unique. It also neatly positions where your product fits in the market. Being able to communicate these things clearly and will serve you well when it comes to connecting with prospective customers, investors, and prospective hires.

Things to keep in mind

👓Clarity is key. Be concise and avoid jargon. Write your pitch for a general audience. This is often a tough thing to do for deep tech companies, but it is integrally important. Being able to communicate in clear language that is easily accessible to cultivating interest and encouraging others to learn more about what you do.

🌒Don’t undersell yourself. Be clear about your vision and your ambition. Many new founders undersell themselves by crafting the one-sentence pitch based on their current stage, or the challenge they’re working at the moment. This is not the place to do this. Your one-sentence pitch is where you outline your late-stage vision.

👋Ask for help. Great pitches are not made in a vacuum. The best way to know if your pitch is hitting the mark is to get as much feedback as possible. Share it with everyone you can, and test the reactions. Do you need more than one sentence to explain what you do? It might be time to head back to the drawing board.

🌎Your pitch should speak to a global audience. In the DNA of each startup is a global identity and mindset. As a company that wants to be a bigger one, make sure your approach adheres to that. Use this exercise as a way to examine your language choice and understand how it can be communicated elsewhere. It’s ok if English is not your first language! Please reach out to others (or share on BoostX) to test your language and to check if it’s communicating what you want it to.

🗑You don’t have to stick to the rules: While the Founder Institute’s template has long been the basis of many a “single sentence pitch” don’t let their structure confine you should you want to put your unique approach on it.

Nothing is static in startups

So you’ve crafted the perfect one-sentence pitch. Once you’ve spent some time to put together something that fits, you don’t have to revisit it again, right? Wrong.

You’re going to need more than one.

One size does not fit all. Look at your one-sentence pitch (developed above as simple, accurate and concise as possible ) as a starting point. This can then be adapted for the specific audience or context, ie investors, users, pitch competition, etc… For investors, or a pitch competition, you might want to focus more on the end vision, or the greater motivations behind your startup. For prospective clients or users, a one-sentence pitch for a product description might focus more on appealing to them as users, and the unique service or value they can expect from you. Make sure your one-sentence pitch is deployed appropriately.

Use your one-sentence pitch to be your guiding star.

Returning regularly to your one-sentence pitch is an important exercise. Especially in the early days, the goalposts are continually changing. When building products incrementally (as startups are doing), founders are adapting to pursue customer feedback, pivoting to new market fits, and at times, getting off track. Revisit your one-sentence pitch on a regular basis. Use it to guide you, and to check that you’re heading in the right direction. These are great opportunities to bring your team together, to remind everyone about the company’s vision, and to check to ensure that everyone is aligned with it.

Let it grow with you.

It’s important to let your pitch guide you, but don’t chain yourself to it and let it become a hindrance. If it doesn’t work for you anymore, don’t hold on to it. If you’ve developed, changed and adapted, make sure you update your one-sentence pitch. Ensure that it continues to embody what’s unique and special about what you do. When it comes to revisiting your vision and one-sentence pitch, the timing for each startup and team will be different. But it is a good practice to do this prior to the advancing towards certain milestones, whether they be in hiring, choosing to raise fundraising or to join an accelerator program. Being able to proceed with these activities with your unique vision and product offering at the forefront of your mind can be an important way to build team alignment and to ensure that this milestone is the right target.

The Challenge

Do you have a “one-sentence pitch”? How about putting one together. Give yourself a timeline, and spend some time crafting it. Is it easier, or harder than you thought? What about writing one for your dream investor? How does that change the pitch? What did you find surprising about developing it?

For further reading

The Art of Writing One-Sentence Product Descriptions: Dave Bailey, The Founder Coach

The One-line Elevator Pitch: Nuno Machado Lopes, Beta-I

Startup Madlibs: The Founder Institute

[This was previously published on February 16, 2020 on BoostX, the member’s area of Startup Boost]