Tessa Roscoe Blog #2: Pitching, Positioning and Presenting

I have been living and breathing pitching for about 2 months now. I recently founded a tech start-up here in Pittsburgh, and have since made in-roads with local business accelerators, investors and collaborators through my presentations. All the advice you're given in school about pitching is correct- tailor your value proposition to your audience; use facts and images to make your case, not fantasy and projections; practice your speech so much it becomes a natural story to tell. However I find one common misconception persistent: the longer the pitch, the harder it is.

Given most people's fear of public speaking, this seems rational- giving a 10 minute speech sounds way more intimidating than a 30 second speech. But I find that longer pitches are actually much easier. You are not rushed for time, speaking 300 miles a minute, trying to fit in all the information you know your audience needs to make a decision about you. You can relax and develop a rapport with your audience, especially in smaller crowds. You have time to adjust your presentation to emphasize information that your audience clearly engages in, and potentially answer questions as they come up instead of in one big swoop at the end.

It's the 30 second elevator pitch that scares me. You have the equivalence of three or four sentences to communicate who you are, what your company/product is, why it's interesting to others, and ask really, really nicely for something you need. I know when I've given a bad elevator pitch- the eyes glaze over like they've just drunk water from a fire hose, the half-absent handshake trying to make a quick escape. It feels like instant failure.

However, another one of my classes focused on pitching technology ideas this week and the TA provided a template for an elevator pitch that I found quite useful.

"My company,    (company name)    , is developing    (a defined offering)   to help   (a target audience)       (solve a problem)     (with secret sauce). " -Daniel Gingrich, 2015, Carnegie Mellon 

While certainly using this does make the pitch sound formulaic, I find it serves a good starting point for developing a strong 30 second pitch. Distilling down the essence of your mission and value to customers is difficult, and it takes lots of development and research to know exactly what you're offering to whom. Being able to fill in these six blanks really helped my venture hone it's message and now I feel very confident in our 30 second pitch.

I would ask my classmates to apply this template to their own ventures as they begin to craft their pitches for Monday's class. Can you fill in all six blanks? If you can't fill in a blank, what will you have to do to get that information (more soul searching? customer development? market analysis? snoop on the competition?)? This should provide some solid direction moving forward!