Pitch Better: How to Talk about Competitors
by Andy Raskin
Lately I’ve been working with a lot of founding teams on improving their investor pitches, and one thing they consistently need help with is how they talk about competition.
To see what I mean, look at the pitch template used by most teams I meet: Guy Kawasaki’s “Only 10 Slides” deck. Kawasaki and others advise discussing competition only after you introduce the problem you’re addressing, your product, your business model and your go-to-market plan:
The trouble with this approach is that it treats you and your competition as if you’re all running some kind of race together, all striving to reach the same finish line, all solving the same problem.
What if, instead, you could position yourself as running a somewhat different race?
How Steve Jobs Did It
Jobs was a master at this. To understand his technique, let’s look at three of the most momentous pitches of his career: his introductory keynotes for the iMac, iPhone, and iPad. (To be sure, these were product pitches, not fundraising ones, but the lessons apply to any pitch you ever make to anyone.)
Let’s start with Apple’s 1998 iMac announcement. Before he unveils the new machine, Jobs shows his audience a photograph of a competitor PC, along with five reasons why it sucks (that’s Jobs in the blurry inset):
Jobs essentially prepares his audience to think of the iMac not simply as a new product, but as a kind of hero — one that will rescue them from a world in which they have to suffer competitors’ shortcomings.
Of course, Jobs isn’t saying competitors suck at everything. They just suck at making a satisfying a customer who wants to spend a lot of time on the Internet.
Nine years later, in 2007, Jobs demonstrates the same approach when launching the iPhone. Before his audiences sees the phone, Jobs show them this slide:
Again, before revealing the product Jobs defines the Promised Land unto which the iPhone will deliver his audience. When he unveils the multi-touch display and the proximity sensor, his audience immediately understands these not just as cool features but as proof points in his narrative about the iPhone creating a future in which they’ll do things smarter and more easily.
How to Avoid Coming Off As Contemptuous
Jobs offers two clues for remaining above the fray. First, he always talks about competitors as a group (even when he names the smartphones, above, he doesn’t single one out for criticism). Second, he always frames the criticism by first defining a future vision for customers. His point is not that competitors suck. They may have lots of great attributes. His point is that they’re just not going to get his customers to the the Promised Land he’s laying out.
You can see his approach again during the iPad launch, in 2010, when he explains why netbooks aren’t great for browsing the Internet:
3 Lessons from Watching Steve Jobs Talk about Competition that You Can Apply to Your Own Pitches
In all, we can discern three big lessons about how you address competition in your decks and presentations:
1. Define the Promised Land you envision for your customers.
2. Explain why competitors (as a group) can not get your customer to that promised land
3. Upon revealing your solution, show how it does help customers get to your promised land, in all the ways competitors don’t.
That’s not to say you can’t revisit competition later in your pitch. But by introducing competitors early and making them part of the problem, you shift the narrative in a crucial way: from us against them, to us fighting for a better future for our customers.
To me, that’s a benefit worth rearranging your deck for.
About Andy Raskin:
I help leadership teams craft strategic stories — to power fundraising, sales, marketing, recruiting, and product. My clients include companies backed by a16z, KPCB, First Round Capital, and other top-tier investors. I also lead storytelling workshops for teams. More at http://andyraskin.com.
