The Short Pitch

We spend hours upon hours crafting our pitches. We follow Guy Kawasaki’s “10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint” and use Sequoia’s pitch deck template as a starting point for our own decks. And we take yours truly’s recommendations on how to create a pitch serious.

After much blood, sweat and tears we end up with a pitch we feel good about. Only problem is — the pitch takes 30 min. Which is fine for an in-person meeting but falls completely flat if we need to be on stage for a pitch competition where you only have 5 minutes or in the proverbial elevator conversation (the dreaded 30–60 seconds).

What to do?

It is actually fairly simple: Take your pitch, go through it play by play, and ask yourself:

“What information can I afford to leave out?”

Do this over and over until you have paired down your pitch to the desired length.

A great thing to do over a long, lazy Sunday.