Pitching in

5 min readDec 1, 2016

Hi there,

My name is William and I’m the creator of a new way to improve your pitching and public speaking skills. With the help of Camille illustrator and artistic director of the project, we are now ready to present this project to you guys.

Let’s begin by the start.

What is it?

Pitch Card is a facilitation kit for training people on public speaking. It is designed to be used with 4 to 120 persons and is composed of two decks of cards. One deck is for the game part, one for the method part, you’ll see what it’s about.

The game part:

You pick 2 keyword cards, 1 constraint card and you have to create a startup pitch in 10 minutes with the help of at least one other person. In 10 minutes you have to think about value proposition, business model, branding…That’s a challenge and a great way to experiment firsthand what a pitch is. As there are several rounds, everyone in the team will have a chance to pitch.

The Method part: Between each round, the pitcher will pick a card from the “method” deck. This deck is designed to question your way of doing things. It will ask questions such as “where are you looking while speaking?” or “can you outline the main point of your talk?”. Basically, instead of telling you what to do, it asks you how you do things and how you could do better.

At this point, the other teams are validating the pitch: did it used the keywords correctly? Was the constraint respected? If they agree, the pitching team has a point.

For the other part of the rules, you’ll have to check the box ;-)

Why such a method?

When working on a pitch, we tend to become obsessed by it. Repeating it again and again until our pitch flows naturally without thinking. In the end, you learn the piece by heart, mistakes and bad habits included. The usual result is an “okay” pitch. It will lead to a lot of clarification asked by your interlocutor afterwards.

We all know that sometimes, being serious can be counterproductive. We all have to breathe for a while, especially when working on a project that means the world to you. Truth be told, it is essential.

But what if, by using Serious Game you could practice your public speaking skills? And we aren’t proposing the “sell me this pen” kind of game.

We are proposing a game that uses 2 aspects of your intellect, the creative one and the structural one. You’ll have to be creative to build a pitch from scratch in a really short time, even with a team.

When the pitch is done, you can use the structuring part of your brain to transpose your experience. What you experimented during your funny pitch is valuable data for your everyday pitch.

Finally, this method is great to get rid of one massive pain in the ass when training people in public speaking: ego

The use of game dynamics during pitch training and the death of ego.

Ego is the worst thing than can hinder your development. We all have ego, even people saying they don’t. As a coach for speakers, I can assure you that 80% of the time ego gets in the way of a good pitch.

Using game dynamics to practice public speaking has a great impact on ego related problems.

With Pitch Card or any pitching game such as the Storycubes, you get around ego. Your feedback doesn’t trigger defense mechanisms such as:

- “I didn’t have time to prepare”

- “You didn’t understand my point”…

And my favorite -”It’s because the project has a great potential”

With our method, you just had fun, you know it wasn’t perfect and you know you forgot something. To tell you the truth, that’s the whole point!

You cannot make a perfect pitch during the game, nobody does! But you can make sure to gain experience and insights from it.

As you won’t be on your project, you’ll dare trying new things. You’ll be able to receive feedback on your performance, your structure and so on. Yes, you’ll get feedback on a pitch involving unicorns, socks and a mobile app but hey, you’re a grown up right? You can transpose your experience from this pitch to yours.

Imagine yourself pitching a crazy idea and being able to use the feedback received on your personal pitch. Imagine daring to try new things, just to see how it is, and finding a great closing line. Imagine having a better pitch while having a lot of fun…

That’s a cool idea but does it works?

The short answer is: like a charm and we have 2 years of test on several kind of attendees to prove it.

The longer version requires a bit of storytelling: 2 years ago William was organizing his first Startup Weekend with a team of incredible people. As he was talkative, they decided to give him the task of organizing an event where attendees could improve their pitching skills.

The challenge was to find a method where everybody was able to pitch, without pitching the project they had in mind for the weekend. Otherwise, it would have been unfair for those unable to attend this training.

The method found on that occasion is now embedded in Pitch Cards. Make them pick 2 funny keywords, one real constraint and give them 10 minutes to create a startup pitch.

This triggered a chain of events. William tested with success this method with students, professionals and startupers for 2 years. During these years, he learned everything he could on public speaking, to the point of becoming a coach for speakers.

Fast forward to June 2016. William has an epiphany and decides to create a game out of this method and his experience. While coaching speaker, he discovered that 50 questions were keeping coming back. Here comes Camille. Camille is the women responsible for the drawing of the game. She triggered the evolution of the game into something amazing. We have now a product with a strong and unique identity and it’s thanks to her.

After 2 years of tweaking and trying, the game had been tested by over 300 persons. One result: they had fun, they learned new things and they wanted a game for themselves!