Speeches in Elevators
Couple of days ago I watched Helsingin Sanomat web-streaming EdTech Pitching Night event, where European start-up companies presented their visions and goals for future learning and education. Performers, who seemed very proud of their products, gave their 3-minutes sales speeches hoping to convince business angels so that they would decide to invest the big bucks.
Each sales pitch needs a striking beginning, some kind of hook that would motivate the audience to listen. The most interesting Pitching Night presenters started their speech with a little story or an incident in which it became clear that there were natural demand for their products. For example, an educational coding game developer, a Dutch named Christian had received a call from Melinda, a Londoner primary school teacher. Melinda was moaning that because of the new curriculum she would have to teach children coding while she knew absolutely nothing about it herself. Melinda called the right guy: Christian´s coding game was perfect solution. The teacher still doesn´t need to practice or understand coding any more than before, but she could only put students play and everything was going to go naturally after that. Problem solved.
In order to give Melinda or teachers from other countries an access to the game, Christian needed only a couple of educational technology specialist investors to hop in the boat. Google and Dell were already with, but Christian still needed a partner who could help him contribute the game to buyers. His game was already available in Dutch, English and Spanish and students of four hundred schools were using it. The game should be easily translated to any language and it could be used anywhere in the world online. Christian´s team was small, but high-skilled, and it would do great things with just half a million to expand it´s services, for example in Finland, where Christian knew coding was written to the curriculum for next year.
Most memorable and activating speeches make the listener want exactly what the speaker has to offer. The speaker seems to know what you’re expecting — and now you’re getting it. The offered service makes life easier, it is in some way useful or fun. And you want to pay for it.
In Metropolia UAS we make several projects with each group of students. Each of the projects are pitched during the brainstorming phase to teachers and working life representatives. Our pitchings are often more like sessions for mentoring and sparring, but in some of the pitching sessions there is the aspect of selection. Only the best ideas are selected for further development.
In our Transmedia projects we have pitched the concepts as entrepreneurs — to potential donors and subscribers. We have been learning not only very challenging transmedia storytelling, but also how transmedia production is carried out. However, the aim is not only to make great plans and a pilot presentation for students´ portfolios but to actually have a chance to make the productions and get paid for it. Entrepreneurship can only be learned by doing — and putting the things you do in words. In order to get your ideas real and make a living out of them, personal skills need to be told to the sponsors. The buyer is of course interested in how that knowledge can be accessed, and especially what he gets out of it.
Our students´ presentation skills and the ability to make visually compelling presentations and videos have evolved dramatically in the last few years. Students can sell their ideas to professionals or big bosses with great self-confidence. They change languages fluently, at least in English, which is the language in most of the international events. Of course a lot of the confidence depends on how much the students have had time to edit their ideas so that they know what they are doing. But when you know your product, and are excited about it, it also inspires the listeners.
Our Talsinki-Hellinn twin city project has been presented to the representatives of the City of Helsinki and the Port of Helsinki as well as YLE. We’ve visited the Estonian Embassy and got feedback from their staff. Next week we will go to Tallinn and we´ll try to gain access to the other twin´s purses — or at least publishing platforms. Wish us luck!
The gabble of elevator speeches will continue to buzz in my ears in Dublin, where I’ll go to take a look on how the CEOs and other wizards of technology start-ups compete for investors’ hearts in the pitchings of Web Summit. In Finland it will be same kind of buzz in Slush event.
Talsinki-Hellinn project´s first twinkle in the eye flashed last autumn in No Noob Networks event in Pasila studios. After his speech I pulled Baltic Film and Media School lecturer Andres Jõesaar´s sleeve, introduced myself, and told him that I would like to learn from him about transmedia as they were doing it so well. It could be successful by doing something together. We’ll see who I will meet in the elevators of Dublin. My idea is to provide learning opportunities in new international teams, and experiment together how media is done in new ways. About the other attendees´ interesting ideas I will write more here in my blog.
Google gave me some tips for Elevator Speeches:
How to Create an Elevator Speech
Crafting an Elevator Pitch
How To Give a Flawless Elevator Pitch
As an update to the post, a reminder from a reader Antti Korhonen in Facebook: You shouldn´t mix the concepts of elevator pitch and investor pitch, since there is a different need for both of them. The first is the 30 second intro that lasts about the time you spend in an elevator. There you make yourself/your company so interesting that when you give your business card to the listener, he/she will actually call you later. Investor´s speech is the few minutes speech where the goal is to 1) tell as clearly and structured way as possible how your company is going to manage in the business so well, that the investor starts an evaluating process about you and consideres investing in you and 2) stand out from all the other pitches the investor hears all the time.
This text was originally published in Minna Kilpeläinen´s blog October 25, 2015.
