The “recipe” for a cool pitch consists of five ingredients. Let's figure out how to "cook" it.
Investors come to accelerator meetup events not for fun, but to find new heroes in which they will believe. Let's put it ingenuously: you are one of thousandth they listen to. And for the convenience of perceiving information about different projects, psychologically it’s comfortable to create a “template” to receive the explanation of projects.
Your purpose it to get out of the template.
What should be the structure of the pitch?
Introduction: information about the project (what are you doing?)
Problem: Whose pain are you relieving, what are you improving?
Product: Describe three key features of the product or describe it in a “how it works” style
Market: what is the size of the market? what share are you claiming?
Business model: how do you plan to make a profit (commission, subscription...More questions for pitch structure >>
Ingredient # 2: design
Today investors are more and more selective and demanding. Both to the level of performances and to the design of presentations. Decide on the type of visual presentation you wish to base on
That is, the speaker with slides in the “many letters” style is seen by the viewer as old-fashioned and obviously loses points. There is a communicative image (as we say), and there is a visual image (as we look). The slides behind the speaker are part of the visual image: both the microphone is needed to amplify the voice, and the presentation is to enhance the material.
Hire a professional visual communication designer for your pitch deck presentation >>>
Ingredient # 3: Chips and Hooks
We are fighting for attention, we are fighting against thoughts about household chores: that we need to register a child for a dance, order a courier tomorrow ... All this lives in the mind of the viewer when he is bored.
What to do? Look for "chips" and come up with hooks to "grab" the audience's attention. Otherwise, you will be just another founder who said something there and showed beautiful pictures.
Use more creativity, wow statistics, small jokes, fun facts, personal stories (not necessarily success, you can fail) or props. All this enlivens the course of the event, and the speaker gets a portion of extra points (if, of course, everything is "on topic").
Ingredient # 4: intelligible and expressive speech
Slow down and take a closer look: if you are often asked again, if you are asked to speak more slowly, if investors move closer in dialogue, then these are signals that we are “chewing” something or your speech is monotonous - there is nothing worse than a speaker at the same volume and one pace speaker. He just puts the audience to sleep.
Ingredient # 5: Explaining
This is perhaps one of the most difficult skills. One startup speaker once shared a brilliant self-pitching life hack at a training session. He trains his pitches on the subway, right in the train. During the trip, he pretends that he is talking on the phone with the interlocutor, but his gaze is directed at the passengers standing next to or sitting opposite. This hack helps to develop several trick which provides the ability to talk about your project and make it clear, polish phrases and successful remarks, memorize the text, the skill to "look" at people.
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