What not to miss from your pitch

Hello dear readers.

Recently, I was invited to an event where about ten startups were pitching themselves to a group of investors and other fine people within the startup ecosystem in Budapest. Most of the pitches were actually pretty great, but as always, there had to be one startup that stood out in a negative manner.

The usual format is that you have three minutes to pitch your idea to a group investors, which is already a hard task, but you shouldn’t make it harder by actually forgetting to mention what your product is. Yes, you’ve read that right. I still don’t know for sure what their product is, even after browsing their website for quite some time. Actually now that I think about it — maybe this was a tactic to get visitors on their website? Definitely not converting though, as there wasn’t even a simple CTA on it.

In any case I thought it would be great to start this blog off with a list of few items that I would not leave out from a slide deck when the following criteria applies:

• You are pitching to a group of investors, advisors or mentors.
• You have three minutes to introduce your startup.
• You need to introduce your startup while assuming that your audience is unaware of your startup completely.

Let’s start. Do note that the items are not necessarily in the order you should about talk about.

1. Your startup’s name

This is a personal pet peeve I bet, but please have your startup’s name written in the slide deck somewhere. Don’t leave it out! Too many people just put their logo and then just mention their name. How am I supposed to write down your name if I don’t know how to spell it? Even a simple word like “Check” could be written like “Czech” and that’s obviously not the same. If I can’t write down your name correctly, then it’s going to be hard for me to DuckDuckGo it.

2. A catchy slide

At these events, you are usually not alone. Pitches come in rapid succession and it helps to have a slide that leaves the audience in awe. In my experience I found that the slides that leave a lasting impression in me are slides that contain at most 3 pieces of information. In a B2B startup, for instance, you could highlight how much money you are saving your customers on average. Show just the dollar amount in the slide (after all, most businesses care more or less only about their bottom line). In B2C, highlight what no other company has figured out yet: are you faster? More efficient? Much more reliable? Tell us!

3. The product

In a pitch, you should introduce the problem you are solving usually by describing why it’s an important problem. Is it because people are being frustrated? Is it because corporations are spend a lot of money on nonsense? What’s the value that you provide? Why now? What’s so different about the world today that nobody figured out yet? You should also talk about how your product solves this problem; and if you have any IP protection, mention it! I feel like this is where you should brag as much as you can. However, while it’s great to be enthusiastic about your solution, please keep the audience in mind. Make sure they aren’t bored and start taking their phones out of their pockets by keeping technical details to a bare minimum.

4. The customers

It comes without saying that you should talk about who will buy your product and what’s your target segment. I also think it’s good to mention why did you choose that segment? Any indicators for future growth of this segment? How will you scale after this segment? Answer some of these questions and most of the early questions people would have had have already been answered.

5. Go To Market and Product/Market Fit

If your product is on the market already, how many customers do you have and how are they responding? Do you have a good user interview from which you can gather a niche use case? Any unexpected use-cases? Similarly, if your product is not yet on the market, how crowded is your market and how are you planning to penetrate it? This is a good opportunity to mention the unique aspect of your business again.

6. The Ask

I was never sure if this is something that you need to mention in your pitches. After all, it should be all about the product, your growth and your users, right? These days I’m more inclined to say that’s not true. In my opinion, it’s always a good idea to reiterate how much money you need and mentioning, very briefly, how you’re going to spend it. Is it for growth? Do you need some (more) product development? Just a couple words, don’t go into too much detail. People listening on the panel will likely write it down and it gives you a chance to dive deep into the current and projected future financials of your business, which you know very well.

7. The Future

What’s the maximum upside potential of your startup? Worldwide dominance? More efficient team communication? Less electricity consumption? A huge social impact? It is great to talk about how your startup will change the present as we know it and the future. Don’t dwell on it for too long, though, as there are too many variables to predict it.

8. The Team

Are you at all capable of delivering this startup and then scaling it? Is everyone in the team indispensible? Make sure your Capitalization Table doesn’t have people, solely because they are your friends. Ideally, the amount of work they (can) put in and the difficulty of problems they solve should be in direct proportion to what their ownership stake is. I’d also like to mention that I don’t really see the point in having your board of advisors on a slide. Investors will know that they have an impact but how much of an impact will they make (at the end of the day) will still depend on the founding team. I’d prefer you leave your advisory board in a backup slide.

9. A story

I find including a story in the pitch explaining how and why you got started with your company is very valuable, especially if you are somehow different (be it age, or else) from the rest of the peers generally associated with your industry. This keeps the audience engaged and helps them connect with you and your background.

10. A weakness

No idea nor company is perfect. Some pitches go far and say they are simply the greatest in every relevant metric/aspect, however, both the audience and the founders know this is not realistic and is likely flat out false if you are an early stage startup (and that’s what I assume you are if you are reading this). Thus, I suggest adding a weakness to your competitor analysis. Surely there is something that you aren’t the best of? Be humble. This will almost certainly be asked about in the Q&A that follows the pitch, so you will be prepared.

Hope this helps.

Best.