7 things you must do to execute a perfect pitch

Just the other day we were chosen to be a part of startup competition. We get this kind of invitations now and then, and sometimes we decide to be a part of it. This is one of those times. Slovenian startup ecosystem was always linked to the Bulgarian startup scene.

Like anybody else, we searched for plane tickets to go to Sofia, but there was simply no luck this time. Apparently, we had to go on a road trip. So we did. We had a 10-hour drive ahead, but we were not afraid. For the most part there is a motorway from Ljubljana to Sofia. Our first stop was in Beograd, where we visited Novak Djoković’s restaurant to have a meal and also to be there when he managed to win yet another tennis match. Sofia was the next stop and our final destination.

Digital|K Conference

The Conference was on the second day of our trip. It started with loud music calling us to take a sit. There were many great speakers, Brian Solis opened the talks. The most intriguing point he had was about how the Netherlands is solving millennials problems. We are all stuck to display of our phone, and that is dangerous when we are part of traffic, even walking on sidewalks makes us part of traffic, and there are more and more accidents with people walking into a red light while writing a message on their phone.

Mystery of colours

On events like this, there is always a new and inspiring product on display, this time I was impressed by a simple dish. As founders, we are always trying new things but think about a colourless world. Would you be brave enough to try Ice Cream without knowing its true colour?

I would love to see different flavours in the same colour, this way the exploration of tastes would be on a whole other level.

The pitch

We have pitched a few times now, but you must take each opportunity as serious as you can. And this time wasn’t an exception. For the pitch, there was a selection process, and we had to convince them even to put us on a list of startups which would participate. So step one was done, the next step was preparing for the pitch. By being a consultant on mobile projects and being part of a startup accelerator, I have listened to a lot of pitches. So I made a list of things that can radically improve your pitch.

Update your slides and pitch

It is hard to update your pitch every single time, but remember you are the one that is connected to your startup. You know what’s going on, you are there making all the decisions. So you need to update what happened, where you improved, new features, new designs,… If you think you are up to date, that is great. Otherwise, it is worth changing, this way event investors that see you more than one time will know, that you are active.

Write text for your pitch

Even the best speakers are not able to create great text there on the spot. A great story is a process. You need to write text for each and every slide, even for the slide where you introduce yourself or your startup. Why? This way you will be able to control all the wording, the sentences and you will be able to stick to the structure of the pitch. 5 minutes, 4 minutes,… you will know how long it will take, you can shorten the text, change calls, emphasis,…

Read out loud

Reading out loud is an important part of the process. Reading will help you practice pronunciation and show you how the text is structured, how much time it takes you to read it. Reading out loud will also help you remember the text.
I have a hint for you here. While reading listen to yourself and pay attention to the way you speak, then mend sentences which you struggle with. There are a lot of ways to say the exact same thing, but some will fit you better. This way your pitch will be smoother.

Memorise your pitch and practice

After reading out loud a couple of times, you should practice your pitch by learning it by heart. This is a hard thing to do, especially if you stick to your text. And you should. Remember, the text was written with the intention to be perfect, so don’t change words while speaking. Try learning it without slides, so that if something goes wrong, and it does in real events, you will still be able to perform your pitch.
Have a clicker and slides
When you get familiar with your pitch you should practice with slides on a display. This will be a strange experience if you memorised it without slides in front of you. It will feel like you do not know your text by heart. So you need to practice a few times with slides in front of you. Try remembering how the text starts for each slide. So if the slides get mixed up while pitching you will know where you are in your presentation.

Practice in front of different people

I know it is hard to speak in front of people. But this is not natural for anybody. Most speakers, even the best ones have stage fright. The difference is that they know how to control it. This is very natural since you want to do as best as possible. To overcome stage fright practice in front of as many people as you can.

Have answers to frequent questions

Most of the time you know what the difficult questions are in advance. So you can prepare your answers. However, one thing is to be prepared the other one is to have a structured answer for it. So write down questions, have your teammates ask you all the difficult ones. Write questions and answers down and form a text. This way you will be able to practice this as well.

My pitch was about Codebrainer and how we have developed a new approach to teaching complete computer beginners how to code. You should check out our page codebrainer.com to see that if you have a product like ours you can expect a lot of questions after the pitch. That is why my list of answers to frequent questions gets longer after every pitch. :) Because it is hard to teach beginners online and we need to improve it even more.

Conclusion

I was glad to pitch at Digital|K conference 2018 in Sofia, thanks Launch Ventures for inviting me. Hope I will be there again soon or a new conference and for the next challenge.

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