The rough outline of a successful startup pitch goes something like this:
- Get me excited about your thing
- Take it away from me
- Tell me what I need to do to get it
- Tell me how I’m going to make money on it
In order to be successful with the first stage, it’s about getting the person you are talking to interested enough to keep listening. To do that, you have to research the person you are pitching to.
What kinds of things do they care about? What about your idea would be interesting to them? Realistically, there will be more than one person at the table, so try to find out as much as you can about all of them, and try to connect your idea to them. This is a sales pitch, and you need to do research on the people just like any excellent salesman would do on a company.
(Lest you think this is a lot of work, assume you will only get around 1 in person pitch for every 20 VCs you contact.)
What you should never, ever do, is create a single pitch and use that everywhere. If you are doing that and wondering why you have no funding, I’d start there.
If you are having trouble getting into the pitch room in the first place, though (1 in 20 isn’t great odds), take a look at your 7 second and your 30 second pitches. What makes you interesting enough in the first 7 seconds to make someone want to find out more about you? If you don’t know, you have some work to do. Think of this as defining your personal “call to action.”
One more tip: if you are not someone who likes being in the spotlight, you are likely the wrong person on your team for the pitch room. You can be coached, but the most successful pitches are performed by people who exude confidence and energy. If that’s not you, get a cofounder who can do it.
Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/What-makes-a-great-startup-pitch-Looking-for-advice-on-the-decks-the-story-vision-etc-What-should-you-do-What-shouldnt-you-do
Originally Posted On: 2015-12-31