How to Pitch Your Company
Originally published: 19/10/2017 15:36
Publication number: ELQ-67391-1
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How to Pitch Your Company

Valuable Q&A from an investor's point of view that advises on how to pitch your startup.

Introduction

It is much easier to talk to an investor if they understand what your company does. As a founder you’ll have to pitch your startup countless times. To be effective, your pitch has to be clear and concise.


In this post I’ve condensed the pitch creation process to answering seven questions. If you can answer all seven questions succinctly you’ll be well ahead of the curve.

  • Step n°1 |

    1. What do you do?

    Start with the name of your company and what it does. For example “Socialcam is a mobile app that makes it easy to take videos and share them with friends and family.” There’s no need to set up the problem, you can just get to the point.



    Too many people spend too much energy trying to make their idea sound impressive. It’s ok to keep it simple. Actually, it’s preferable. You want to explain what you do in the simplest language possible. This needs to be predigested. Your elevator pitch should be like baby food.


    If you’re having trouble communicating your product simply, walking me through the user path can be an effective tactic. For example, “We’re Google. We build a website with a box in it. You can type any question into that box and we’ll show you websites that answer that question.”


    Walking me through the user path helps avoid explanations like, “We’re Google. We organize the world’s information by indexing the web.” With that description I’m lost.


    Your goal when answering this question should not be to have me understand your whole business but rather make me interested enough to ask follow-up questions.
    How to Pitch Your Company image
  • Step n°2 |

    How big is the market?

    There are two ways to get market size. If you’re entering a pre-existing space (like small business banking) you can research it. If you’re creating a new product or space (like Slack), you can estimate the number of customers that would want your product and approximate how much you could charge them.



    For example: Bellabeat makes an activity tracker for women. There are X women between 14 and 45 in the US. The lifecycle of our activity tracker is two years. Our market opportunity in the US is Y.


    When you’re estimating market size and what % you could own, there are two methods: top down and bottom up. With the top down approach you determine the total market and estimate your potential share of it. With bottom up you figure out where comparable products are sold, how many of them are sold, and what % of those sales you could take. I prefer the bottom up method because it helps you avoid a common top down pitfall, which is not narrowing down the customer enough. In the example above that could mean assuming all women are in your market – no matter their age or nationality.
    How to Pitch Your Company image

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