Honing Your Pitch

Perfecting Your Pitch

Nearly every startup incubator or accelerator devotes at least half of its programming to helping founders hone their pitches, from quick elevator spiels to formal PowerPoint decks. Why spend so much time on something other than refining operations, hiring rockstar employees, and understanding customer needs? Because the pitch is how you as a founder can share your story with potential funders, partners, and even internal stakeholders. Doing whatever you do well is obviously important, but without being able to explain what you do and what you need, you won’t be able to raise the money or find the supporters you need to grow. Being a good storyteller isn’t the same as being a good executive (ahem, Adam Neumann or Elizabeth Holmes), but founders are often required to be both simultaneously. These tips should help you to craft your pitch for every audience and deliver it with poise.

1. Be Ready for Everything.

Practice multiple versions of your pitch, in different lengths and for different audiences, with and without a PowerPoint deck in front of you. You should be able to answer a variant of “What do you do?” for new acquaintances at dinner parties, for potential investors or partners, prospective employees, and customers, if you have 30, 60, 90 seconds or 30, 60, 90 minutes. Include the substance of the problem you’re solving, your solution, and why you’re the right person to solve it. If your problem or solution is highly technical, practice versions with different levels of sophistication, e.g., one for the expert who might be interested in mentoring you, one for the family friend who might throw in some seed funding, and one for the potential customer who will desperately need your product as soon as they hear about it.

There’s no magic formula for a perfect pitch. I’ve heard effective ones that start from the founder’s own experience dealing with whatever problem they’re aiming to fix, and ones that are less personal and more focused on how innovative the solution is. Be authentic — if you’re not comfortable baring your soul to someone you just met, don’t craft a pitch that’s overly emotional.

If you’re having trouble articulating exactly what sets you apart, or why the problem you’ve identified desperately needs to be solved, go back to the reasons you started your company in the first place. What motivated you to do this work? What keeps you going every day? Do you have a great customer story to share, where using your product or service helped them in some important way? Or maybe a story about someone who needed your product or service but didn’t get it in time? Think like a storyteller with a beginning, middle, and end — set up the tale, introduce some kind of problem or incident to increase the action to the climax, then explain the resolution. You can work in numbers ($3T market opportunity!) if you’re so inclined and they will help your listener.

2. Don’t Rely on Slides, But Make Sure the Ones You Create are Solid.

I love PowerPoint, but I’d rather see no slides than bad ones. What makes a bad deck? (FYI: a set of slides is called a deck. That’s because they used to have to be presented manually on slide projectors, and the group of slides together looked like a deck of cards).

• Too much text: if I have to squint to read your slides, I’m not going to. Use charts/graphs, icons, and other images to lighten up slides and make them visually appealing. (Just make sure they’re relevant and actually help to tell your story). Bold important phrases or results to make sure your viewer sees them. Don’t overdo it, or it will have the opposite effect. And please, no ALL CAPS — they make the reader feel like they’re being yelled at, and they can be hard to read.
• No context: there’s a difference between a presentation deck and a pre-read/leave-behind. If you’re in the room and narrating each slide, you can get away with having more conceptual slides. Sometimes a picture of beautiful mountain scene is the perfect fit for your voiceover about the “aha” moment on the Pacific Crest Trail when you created your magical water cleaning solution, but it’s not going to make any sense to someone who doesn’t know you and is trying to decide whether or not to schedule a meeting to learn more. But if you intend to share your deck so they can review it without you, make sure it makes sense as a stand-alone document. That means no random pictures without captions and no insider jargon or acronyms that aren’t widely known. It’s a good idea to have multiple versions of your deck for different purposes, including in different lengths: ones that you can present for live pitches, ones you can email, and if applicable, a technical deck for a more sophisticated audience.
• In the wrong order: most pitch decks follow a set storyline (problem => solution => your innovation, etc.). Yes, it’s not creative to follow the same storyline as everyone else. But I still want to see your slides in that order. As an investor, I know exactly what I’m looking for when I review a pitch deck. Don’t make me work too hard to understand your story. The innovation and creativity should come in what you’re accomplishing, not in how you’re describing it to me.
• Too little info: tell me what you want from me. If you’re raising money, tell me how much and what you’re going to do with it. Tell me who is on your team, and why they’re qualified — headshots are great, but they don’t mean anything without text. Don’t pretend like you don’t have competitors, especially if a quick Google search will tell me who is beating you at SEO.
• Delusional: optimism is good, maybe even required for an entrepreneur. But if you say that you’re going to get the regulatory approvals you need in one month, or go from two customers to two thousand in the next two weeks, I’m going to assume you don’t know your business all that well. I expect to see the “hockey stick” chart somewhere in your slides, but I’m unlikely to believe it without some evidence that you have a plan to achieve that level of growth through sales or marketing. (Even then, I don’t think most people believe you’ll achieve the $100M in exactly the way you describe, but investors need to see that you have a plan).

And if you are presenting your slides, please don’t read off them. One benefit of practicing so many times is that you should know the contents of your slides so well that you don’t need to look at them while presenting. That means you can look at your audience and gauge their response to be able to adjust in real-time. And if tech fails, you’ll still be able to give your pitch, which makes you look good. I love to see how entrepreneurs adapt on the fly — if you keep your cool when your PPT doesn’t load, I’ll have more confidence in how you can handle all of the annoyances that come up as you run your company.

3. Practice. Then Practice More.

One fantastic entrepreneur I know recommends practicing in the car because 1) it’s a great use of unavoidable delay; 2) you can’t over-rely on your slides; and 3) you are (hopefully!) concentrating on driving, which helps with practicing those awkward moments when you forget your lines or you get distracted. Recording yourself practicing on a computer screen (you can use Loom to record quick videos, or even record your own solo Zoom meeting) can also be helpful, especially if you are going to pitch virtually.

Although practicing by yourself is necessary, it is not sufficient. You understand what you’re trying to say, but someone who has never heard of your company (or even the problem you’re trying to solve) may not.

If you don’t have the time or inclination to join an official incubator or accelerator program, enlist a friend, family member, mentor, or anyone else you can persuade to watch and provide candid feedback. You can also join in events like 1 Million Cups to practice in front of other entrepreneurs. (Other founders are often the best audience, because they can be supportive and give constructive advice based on their own experience). I don’t recommend practicing only with colleagues, for the same reason that practicing solo isn’t enough; they know too much about your mission to be able to point out the holes in your logic or areas that don’t make sense. You want someone who can be objective. If they don’t understand what you sell or the service you provide, and why it’s important, a random angel investor likely won’t either.

In classic startup fashion, iterate, test, and learn — if a certain phrase seems to resonate more, use it. If one falls flat, tweak it. Keep practicing and incorporating feedback until it feels totally natural to introduce yourself and your company.

Have Fun

Your pitch is your opportunity to tell your story. The more you practice, the less awkward and more conversational it will feel, and the more you can enjoy sharing what you do with the rest of the world.