The Beauty of Simple Pitching
Given that, at Portier Technologies, we still operate in the very exciting yet strangely confusing world of startups, pitch events are part of the regular agenda. Being the fundraising lead in our small group, I get to travel to some pretty exciting locations such as “enter humble brag here” on a very regular basis.
Last week, I got to go to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) to pitch our company at a government-sponsored event for scale-up companies. As always, there was a stage, a timer, an audience and the visual beauty of slides (that last one is a cheap joke, as you’ll discover below). Having been to many such events, it wasn’t anything particularly special that made me reflect on the idea of pitching but, for some reason, I ended up intently listening to a number of company founders speak about their startup and as to why a potential investment should not be missed.
It was intriguing to see all these companies that were doing some incredible things, with some of them even being commended by the likes of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. In other words, it was a pretty competitive field out there. However, it was just as intriguing to see as to how some key messages were lost in pitches that failed to focus on the basics.
Listening to the majority of these companies and their founders, it was clear to see that, more often than not, simplicity is a lot harder to achieve than complexity. In some ways, Apple focusing on simple-to-understand lifestyle elements of their iPhones, whilst competitors go wild on hard-to-grasp features of their devices, is a good analogy here. At events such as the one above, product and features often take over the minds of the founders, and this makes a simple pitch somewhat complex.
The reason as to why I’m bringing this up has nothing to do with the companies I witnessed in my time, but instead, this is mostly related to my personal experience of going through a really well-organised accelerator programme. It was only in Malaysia that it dawned on me as to how valuable a good accelerator programme could be, not just for the sake of pitching your business, but for any type of communication that you might be involved in.
Until last week, I still remained skeptical enough about the idea of giving up equity and time to an accelerator. In our case, we joined one of the world’s most competitive ones, namely Chinaccelerator, a programme run by SOSV that takes place in Shanghai, China. In this context, my attendance at last week’s event served as a personal epiphany of some sort.
The effectiveness of talking about you and your business in the format of “problem-solution-traction” is simply not something I could have acquired at a library or by watching YouTube videos, even though it sounds simple enough. In that respect, whilst pitching on stage, I realised as to how easy things can be when you’re focused on breaking down complexity, rather than promoting it; and that’s something I’ve been prepared for at the above-mentioned programme.
In addition to the simplicity of the message you’re sending to the listeners in the audience via your microphone, there’s the big question mark lurking in the periphery of your slides. Whilst your speech can achieve great results through the previously mentioned format of “problem-solution-traction”, your slides can achieve just as impressive simplicity if you stick to the concept of “one idea per slide”. Unfortunately, without the right guidance, you might struggle to build this strong basis of any pitch.
I guess what I’m saying here is clear; if you haven’t joined an accelerator yet, and you’re trying to run your startup, joining a great programme will not just prepare you for the benefit of your current business, but will equip you with a set of very transferable and applicable personal tools you can take advantage of for the rest of your life. If it’s the equity or time you’re worried about, think again!
