This week was all about great ideas and pitches. People pitched all through Monday's class and a few on Wednesday too. The ideas that everyone had were great ranging from services for hospitals to products for people who need clean water (no harm promoting my own idea so early in the post). There were a lot of things I learnt from everyones pitches. Obviously everyone isn't born with great orating skills but anyone can become a good orator to sell an idea. An important thing is directing your pitch to the right audience and knowing what to tell them that will grab their attention. For example a pitch to an investor could be very different from a pitch to a customer. One needs to rehearse and be very confident of the material they have to deliver effectively to the targeted audience.
So Wednesdays class was when I pitched the idea of Luvwater and frankly I feel I could have done way better because I missed out on some key details that would definitely help me to gain investor attention. For example, I had skipped out on the fact that we have already filed two provisional patents which is a pretty important detail (didn't feel great when Tim asked me later why didn't I mention it in the pitch). Also, I really need a better way to explain the product which people get instantaneously(eg: Chipotle is like the McDonalds for mexican food). Also I need to focus a lot more on making a building the product and making sure it works rather than participating in the various business plan competitions.
Also on Wednesday Tim spoke about the 3 P's, Pitching, Positioning and Presenting. Loads of cars have failed due to poor positioning of their product. That's why I was thinking about how to position Luvwater. But one thing that Tim said in class intrigued me. Currently our business plan is to approach disaster management agencies like Red Cross, Global Dirt etc. Tim said that getting these huge organisations to endorse a product like this could take many years as it takes a long time to approve. This got me thinking and we thought that would it be more beneficial to have this product be sold to customers first and get it endorsed by them and then eventually because of that customer feedback pitch it to these big organisations which will lead to faster adoption by them.
One more thought came to me as to how should a social product be priced and how much of a margin should a company take out of the product. This is a question I would like to ask later when most of the product details are decided upon.
To make this a little more insightful have a look at this pretty old article on fastcompany.com (I feel it still holds true today) that talks about what great brands do right.
http://www.fastcompany.com/29056/what-great-brands-do
So Wednesdays class was when I pitched the idea of Luvwater and frankly I feel I could have done way better because I missed out on some key details that would definitely help me to gain investor attention. For example, I had skipped out on the fact that we have already filed two provisional patents which is a pretty important detail (didn't feel great when Tim asked me later why didn't I mention it in the pitch). Also, I really need a better way to explain the product which people get instantaneously(eg: Chipotle is like the McDonalds for mexican food). Also I need to focus a lot more on making a building the product and making sure it works rather than participating in the various business plan competitions.
Also on Wednesday Tim spoke about the 3 P's, Pitching, Positioning and Presenting. Loads of cars have failed due to poor positioning of their product. That's why I was thinking about how to position Luvwater. But one thing that Tim said in class intrigued me. Currently our business plan is to approach disaster management agencies like Red Cross, Global Dirt etc. Tim said that getting these huge organisations to endorse a product like this could take many years as it takes a long time to approve. This got me thinking and we thought that would it be more beneficial to have this product be sold to customers first and get it endorsed by them and then eventually because of that customer feedback pitch it to these big organisations which will lead to faster adoption by them.
One more thought came to me as to how should a social product be priced and how much of a margin should a company take out of the product. This is a question I would like to ask later when most of the product details are decided upon.
To make this a little more insightful have a look at this pretty old article on fastcompany.com (I feel it still holds true today) that talks about what great brands do right.
http://www.fastcompany.com/29056/what-great-brands-do
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