How to start your pitch

If you either need to raise money, hire or convince a customer, you need explain your idea quickly while making an impact. Here is a series of post on how to do this.

As a member of selection committee, jury and business angel, I have seen a lot of startup pitch. I have also coached team to improve their pitch. Here is the framework I use.

Start with the problem

People don’t care about your solution until their care about the problem you want to solve. To tell your audience about the problem you want to solve, let them live it. Tell a story. And that story is the story of the dragon, the princess, and the knight.

Once upon a time, a beautiful princess was held prisoner in a castle by horrible dragon and she could’t get out to live her dream. Until one day a knight comes, fights the dragon and free the princess.
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Now transform this story:
Princess => your customer
Make her authentic, personal and likeable. Give her a name. Sam from Sales

Dragon => your customer’s problem
The problem sound painful to the audience so they want to to be relieved

Knight => your solution or product
I will talk about how to present the knight in a follow post.

Starting like this allow you to:

  • communicate emotion, connecting directly with your audience
  • make the problem you will solve very clear to them
  • build up the expectation for a solution
  • give them something they can remember

    Next, present your product….