wow! the art of the pitch
DESCRIPTION
Adam Lorant and Sandra Wear originally presented this in late 2011. This is very practical advice on how to tailor you message to a particular audience and to a particular situation. What you can say in 30 seconds at a networking function will be quite different than what you can cover when closing a deal. Make sure your message matches the moment.TRANSCRIPT
WOW!
The Art of The Pitch
Adam Lorant
Centre4Growth
Ph
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: Ta
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My Background
1998-2000
2001-2004
Enough about me…
So what do you do?
Agenda
1. Know Your Audience
2. Build Substance
• The 5 T’s
3. Package Style
• The Pitch Pyramid
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WOW !!! Source: Pennstatelive
Tune your pitch for your audience
• Co-founders
• Employees
• Professionals
• Partners
• Customers
• Investors
• Media
• Your mother
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Know Your Audience
PLEASE. Before you prepare a pitch or a presentation or a web site.
1.Understand who you’re talking to;
2.What questions they want answered; and
3.What you want to get out of the meeting.
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People buy in to a Great Story.
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Storytelling is an Art, not a Science.
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Telling a Great Story: Substance, Style.
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Substance
Creating Substance: The 5T ’s
T r o u b l e
T e c h n o l o g y
T e a m
T r a c t i o n
T r e a s u r e
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Creating Substance: The 5 T ’s
T r o u b l e
T e c h n o l o g y
T e a m
T r a c t i o n
T r e a s u r e
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• What problem are you solving for
your customer?
• How big of a pain is it for them?
• What’s the cost to switch from
their current solution?
Risk vs. WOW
Creating Substance: The 5 T ’s
T r o u b l e
T e c h n o l o g y
T e a m
T r a c t i o n
T r e a s u r e
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• What’s your secret sauce?
• Why do I care?
• What’s new, original and different
about your product?
• First/Best/Only
• How easy is it for a competitor to
replicate?
• Know-how or Patents
Risk vs. WOW
Creating Substance: The 5 T ’s
T r o u b l e
T e c h n o l o g y
T e a m
T r a c t i o n
T r e a s u r e
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Risk vs. WOW
• What domain expertise does the
management team have?
• Where are the experience and
expertise gaps?
• Who are the advisors & board of
directors?
Creating Substance: The 5 T ’s
T r o u b l e
T e c h n o l o g y
T e a m
T r a c t i o n
T r e a s u r e
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Risk vs. WOW
• How well do you understand your
customer?
• How many customers do you
have and what’s your growth
rate?
• What do customers say about
you/your product?
• What is your customer acquisition
strategy and cost to acquire
customers?
• What’s the customer’s
cost/benefit?
Creating Substance: The 5 T ’s
T r o u b l e
T e c h n o l o g y
T e a m
T r a c t i o n
T r e a s u r e
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Risk vs. WOW
• How big is the market?
• How much money do you need to
raise?
• How fast are you going to get to
revenue & profitability?
• What’s your pricing strategy like?
Investment Return Graph
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Revenue
Profit
$5M investment
Break Even Q11 2,000 Customers $1,000 per customer
Rel 1 Revenue Q5 $3.5 M spend
Beta Q4 $2.5M spend
Alpha Q3 $2M spend
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q8 Q10 Q12 Q7 Q9 Q11
1,000,000
2,000,000
3,000,000
4,000,000
-1,000,000
-2,000,000
Investment Return Graph
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Revenue
Profit
$5M investment
Break Even Q11 2,000 Customers $1,000 per customer
Rel 1 Revenue Q5 $3.5 M spend
Beta Q4 $2.5M spend
Alpha Q3 $2M spend
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q8 Q10 Q12 Q7 Q9 Q11
1,000,000
2,000,000
3,000,000
4,000,000
-1,000,000
-2,000,000
Seed
Round
Friends &
Family
fund concept
< $100K
< 9 months
Angel
Round
High Net Worth
fund traction
< $500K
< 18 months
A - Round
VCs
fund growth
$2M+
18M+ months
Substance
Style
Putting it all together: A Great Story
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• 3 - 5 words Concept
• 100 seconds Stand-up
• 100 words “Get a Meeting”
• 10 slide deck I n v e sto r
The Concept Pitch
Say it in 3-5 words…
• 3 - 5 words Concept
• 100 seconds Stand-up
• 100 words “Get a Meeting”
• 10 slide deck Invest or
The Concept Pitch
NOT your Tagline
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The Concept Pitch
NOT your Vision or Mission Statement
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The Concept Pitch
Simple, memorable description of your business, using
analogies to paint a metaphor.
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”Flickr for video”
“Amazon for rare, collectable, out-of-print books”
”AT&T for the Internet”
”Classified Ads for the Internet”
”Encyclopaedia Britannica for the Internet”
The Stand Up Pitch
Your elevator pitch.
Cocktail party conversation.
The 100 second story.
• 3 - 5 words Concept
• 100 seconds Stand-up
• 100 words “Get a Meeting”
• 10 slide deck Invest or
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The Stand Up Pitch
“Tell me about your company!”
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Make it a short, engaging description of
your business.
Technology
What you need to cover:
Trouble
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a
a
Team
Traction
Treasure
a
a
a
Sample Stand Up Pitch PetPlay is introducing a line of gourmet canned cat foods with the brand name Petite
Cuisine. These products look good, smell great, and taste great because they are people
food for cats! You may not want to, but you could eat it!
Research shows consumers love the products for their refreshing look and pleasant
smell—and cats devour them. Petite Cuisine is 100% nutritionally complete for cats and
is made from products you would buy at the meat and fish counter. The line currently
has eight items including whole tuna, red snapper filets, baby shrimp, and rock crab.
I launched and ran Fancy Feast, the largest competitor in this space nationally and ran
one of Nestle's international pet food divisions. I know this market well.
Orders are in from Ralph's grocery chain with additional distribution commitments
totalling 500 stores.
Capital is being raised in two stages—$500,000 in initial launch capital for 500 stores
and then a round of expansion capital of $3 to $5 million for 3,000+ stores.
Tech Coast Angels, 2007
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Breaking down the Pitch PetPlay is introducing a line of gourmet canned cat
foods with the brand name Petite Cuisine. These
products look good, smell great, and taste great because
they are people food for cats! You may not want to, but
you could eat it!
Research shows consumers love the products for their
refreshing look and pleasant smell—and cats devour
them.
Petite Cuisine is 100% nutritionally complete for cats
and is made from products you would buy at the meat
and fish counter. The line currently has eight items
including whole tuna, red snapper filets, baby shrimp,
and rock crab.
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Catchy concept pitch
Problem you’re solving
Understands industry and
consumers
Differentiated product T
T
I launched and ran Fancy Feast, the largest competitor in
this space nationally and ran one
of Nestle's international pet food divisions. I know this
market well.
Orders are in from Ralph’s grocery chain with additional
distribution commitments totalling 500 stores.
Capital is being raised in two stages—$500,000 in initial
launch capital for 500 stores and then a round of
expansion capital of $3 to $5 million for 3,000+ stores
Breaking down the Pitch
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BIG experience
Good traction
Understands what it will
take T
T
T
The “Get a Meeting” Pitch
• 3 - 5 words Concept
• 100 seconds Stand-up
• 100 words “Get a Meeting”
• 10 slide deck Invest or
The “Get a Meeting” Pitch
• NOT an executive summary
• NOT a product description
• High level concept description + team + traction
• Can be formatted as an email
• Target 100 words or less
• Delivery measured in seconds, not minutes
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Subject: Introducing Ning to Blue Shirt Capital
Hi Nivi,
Thanks for offering to introduce us to Blue Shirt Capital. I've attached a short presentation about
our company, Ning.
Briefly, Ning lets you create your own social network for anything. For free. In 2 minutes. It's as
easy as starting a blog. Try it at http://ning.com
Ning unlocks the great ideas from people all over the world who want to use this amazing medium
in their lives.
We have over 115,000 user-created networks and our page views are growing 10% per week. We
previously raised $44M from Legg Mason and others, including myself.
Before Ning, I started Netscape (acquired by AOL for $4.2B) and Opsware (acquired by HP for
$1.6B).
I've admired Blue Shirt's investments from afar. We're starting meetings with investors next week
and I would love to show Blue Shirt what we're building at Ning.
Best,
Marc Andreessen [email protected] 415.555.1212 Source: Pitching Hacks, 2009
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Subject: Introducing Ning to Blue Shirt Capital
Hi Nivi,
Thanks for offering to introduce us to Blue Shirt Capital. I've attached a short presentation about our company, Ning.
Briefly, Ning lets you create your own social network for anything. For free. In 2 minutes. It's as easy as starting a blog. Try it at http://ning.com
Ning unlocks the great ideas from people all over the world who want to use this amazing medium in their lives.
We have over 115,000 user-created networks and our page views are growing 10% per week. We previously raised $44M from Legg Mason and others, including myself.
Before Ning, I started Netscape (acquired by AOL for $4.2B) and Opsware (acquired by HP for $1.6B).
I've admired Blue Shirt's investments from afar. We're starting meetings with investors next week and I would love to show Blue Shirt what we're building at Ning.
Best,
Marc Andreessen [email protected] 415.555.1212 Pitching Hacks, 2009
Simple & concise email
Problem you’re solving
Good metaphor pitch phrase
Good experience
Good customer engagement
Call to action
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The Investor Pitch
• 3 - 5 words Concept
• 100 seconds Stand-up
• 100 words “Get a Meeting”
• 10 slide deck Invest or
The Investor Pitch
• NOT a description
• NOT a business plan in PowerPoint
• NOT about explaining, it's about SELLING
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An illustrated story about the
opportunity.
Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 Rule
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10 20 30 Slides Minutes Point Font
Target: 3 bullets, 20 words per slide. Lots of graphics.
Clean, Simple, Visual, Powerful, Memorable
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The sequence of slides tells a story:
We have a mission and a team that is taking us there. Why?
We discovered this large problem and solved it with a
product that has this amazing technology inside. We’re
going to market and sell it to these customers, with these
advantages that competitors simply cannot match. In
particular, we’re working towards these milestones over the
next few quarters. In conclusion, this financing is a great
investment opportunity.
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Contents of an Investor Pitch
1. Problem 2. Your solution 3. Business model 4. Underlying magic/technology 5. Marketing and sales 6. Competition 7. Team 8. Status and timeline 9. Projections and milestones 10. Summary and call to action
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The Problem
• Describe the customer,
market, and problem
you address, without
getting into your
product.
• Current state and
seriousness of the
problem.
• E.g. How you came up
with the idea.
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Solution • Introduce your product
and its benefits and describe how it addresses the problem you just described.
• Include a demo such as a screencast, a link to working software, or pictures.
• Make it visual. Make it real for your audience.
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Business Model • Explain how you are going
to make money.
• If you have sales, describe the value to customers.
• Describe the economics that turn the business into $X kajillion per year.
• Use microeconomics (each user is worth $1/year) rather than macroeconomics (i.e. if we can get 1% of a $10B market…).
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Underlying Magic or Technology
• Describe the technology
behind your solution.
• Focus on how the
technology enables the
differentiated aspects of
your solution.
• If applicable, mention
patent status.
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Marketing and Sales
• Who are the customers? How big is the market?
• You summarized this in your Problem slide and this is your opportunity to elaborate.
• How are you going to acquire customers?
• What customers have you already acquired?
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Competition
• Describe why customers use your product instead of the competition’s.
• Describe any competitive advantages that remain after the competition decides to copy
• Never deny that you have competitors — it's okay to compete. Against anyone.
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Team
• Highlight the past accomplishments of the team.
• Include directors or advisors who bring something special to the company.
• Don’t include positions you intend to fill — save that for the milestones slide.
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Status and Timeline
• Looking back, what
have you done so far.
• Dates, amounts, and
sources of money
raised.
• Include hires,
customers, revenues,
technical milestones.
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Projections and Milestones
• A timeline chart that
overlays significant
milestone dates -
funding, product
development,
customer delivery,
markets and revenue,
expense profit/loss
projections.
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Summary
• Summarize the key,
compelling facts of the
company. Make sure
you cover all the topics
that are in your
elevator pitch.
• Finish with a call to
action.
• Include your complete
contact information.
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The Art of the Pitch
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Concept
Stand-up
“Get a Meeting”
Invest or
WOW!
STYLE
AUDIENCE
SUBSTANCE
Technology
Traction
Team
Treasure
Who They You
$ $
Trouble
Storytelling is an ongoing process of continuous improvement
Apply
Test Critique
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YOUR HOMEWORK
• Email me your concept and stand-up pitches. (Oct 28)
• Prepare your Investor Pitch.
1 hour, one-on-one review.
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And they lived happily ever after…
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Backup
Contacts, References and Acknowledgements
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• BCTIA [email protected] and [email protected]
• www.centre4growth.com;http://twitter.com/centre4growth
• http://venturehacks.com/pitching
• http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html#
axzz1DWuDlhhM
• http://www.startupblender.com/posts/004-your-pitch-sucks
• “30 seconds to pitch your company”, Steve Bayle
• http://www.pitchtheangels.com/
• http://www.flickr.com/