Pitch Better: 10 “Rules” to Break

(nod of thanks to Seth Levine, Gordon Whyte and David Teten for blogging about these tip sheets when I first put them on my site)

1. Don’t say “Um.” Look, don’t freak out over bad verbal habits. Minimize them, but trying too hard can blow your cool.

2. One slide per minute. If you have even close to that we’ll hit you. You shouldn’t have anywhere near that many. Unless you know what you’re doing.

3. Memorize your speech. Recital is not effective communication

4. What you say is just 7% of your credibility. Whomever told you that owes you every penny you paid them.

5. Use your full time slot. Quality, not quantity. Be succinct. Be alluring. Make them want to follow-up.

6. End with a summary slide. End by encouraging the next steps in the process.

7. Speak up. Make yourself heard, but more importantly vary your tone, speed, volume & inflection to maintain audience attention.

8. Start by introducing yourself. You just got introduced. Open with some drama (or at least excitement) and get right to the “ah-ha.”

9. Answer every question they might possibly have. Aim to be complete, but don’t overkill. Your pitch is like an executive summary.

10. Sum the years’ experience on your team. 40+ years, wow! Does that mean 10 schmucks with 4 years’ each or 3 with 13 1/3?

11. Make your pitch into a story. “Story” is a hot right now, but be judicious. Don’t just string stories together or be contrived, use 1 (maybe 2) and use other techniques too, like comparisons to convey unfamiliar material in terms of something listeners already understand. (Oh and as always, give something extra)

Ten things you MUST do in your next pitch

(nod of thanks to Seth Levine, Gordon Whyte and David Teten for blogging about these tip sheets when I first put them on my site)

1. Get to the “ah-ha” immediately: Why is your business a great investment? What’s in it for investors?

2. Attend to audience and desired results first. Everything you say and show serves both or doesn’t belong in the pitch.

3. Cut the PowerPuke clutter – .ppt file is not “your presentation” it’s a visual aid. Keep only slides that illustrate your talk. Chuck the rest.

4. Those slides you kept? Chuck a couple more and streamline the rest. Try to read your slides from across the room. (Stuff the detail where it belongs – in an appendix of your business plan.)

5. Say something on slide titles – replace “Company History” with “Substantial Value Built” (Investors recognize a management team slide without you labeling it “Team” – use the title to tell them about your team.)

6. Prepare effectively. Practice in front of your team, in front of a camera, in front of a group of laypeople, get their feedback, refine the logic flow and try again.

7. Know your best style. Earnest, clear speaking beats stilted, overproduced and even “by the rules” reciting any day.

8. Interact with the audience. Refer to handouts, ask thought questions, make genuine eye contact. End by asking them to do something incremental like drop by the booth or website.

9. Ask yourself: How can I make it easier for these investors to do their jobs? (You’re in customer service and they’re the customer)

10. Features = characteristics (adjectives). Benefits = actions (verbs). Benefits matter the most. Know the difference.

11. Give a little something extra…

Josh Kopelman on targeting your pitch to an investors' criteria

Josh Kopelman offers an extensive tutorial on matching your pitch to an investor's "analysis framework". I am just coming off Om Malik's WebEx seminar, so more analysis on this later.

Lately I've found myself in a number of pitch sessions where I've quickly realized that the entrepreneur's pitch did not correspond to the framework I use to analyze a company. All investors have some type of mental model and set of proxies that they use to help them evaluate a company and how it fits into an overall market. This model will often drive the types of questions that a VC will ask. This is not rocket science - rather, just some common sense. For example, if you are entering into an existing market with entrenched players, a VC will place a lot of importance on understanding the competitive landscape.

To really deliver a knock-out pitch, an entrepreneur should have an understanding of how the model works, and frame their presentation squarely within it. This allows them to anticipate the questions that the VCs are likely to ask before they ask them. Although these mental models can vary from individual to individual, there are some basic fundamentals that apply across the board. The first step is...

Your Investment Pitch is NOT Your CV

True story -- at a major investment fair, I saw an entrepreneur (waste) a number of their 8 scarce "pitching" minutes outlining the development of the core idea behind their business from Grad school onward.

Now, raise your hands all the Investors in the audience who give a sh*t about when you first thought there might be something to your idea.

Okay, how many of you want to know: "Is the idea is scalable, lucrative and competitive in a viable marketplace?" "Is it a good match with my objectives?""Do I think this team can do it?"

Point is, too much pitching tries too hard to show how good the idea is instead of how good the investment is.

Other point is, what were you thinking? If you MUST use milestones and timelines to show your business has traction and value (HINT: there are much better ways) please AT LEAST put the most IMPORTANT at the TOP of the list, NOT the bottom.

No investor cares how brilliant you were in Grad school, unless your mom's a VC.

Communications, Defined

Over steaks in Philly years ago, Frank Maguire gave me this three-part definition of "communication". I invoke it in nearly every engagement:

Communication = message sent, message received, message acted upon

We're all geniuses at "message sent" -- advertising, brochures, endless talking -- it's all literally a "broadcast" model of communications. Erect the tower, transmit the signal and send send send. And at the same time, if a tree falls in the woods, and nobody hears it...

You're confidently hitting "message received" most of the time? Good for you, you're measuring, paying attention, ensuring that the message reaches its destination. While you speak you also should absorb whether you are getting across. Stop, look, listen, just be sure you create a two-way street with the audience, however subtle or overt.

The true destination, though, is "message acted upon." Speaking and presenting is a results game. WHY are you speaking? WHAT do you need to achieve? Results, objectives, outcomes, goals are all the provenance of audience response. WHO do you need to affect, and most explicitly HOW do you need them to react?


Do you speak well? Good. Are you consistently heard? Better. Do you accomplish your objectives whenever you speak? Hurrah, email me to become a contributor to this blog :-)


If you think "objective" doesn't apply to your presentation, you're wrong. Objectives can be subtle, unexpected and indirect. They can be improvised, ad-hoc and changing on the fly. But ultimately, there's a REASON why you are up there (even if that reason is appease the audience until the main show can begin). You need to always focus on that reason.