Incubator Workshop: What is a Pitch?

The following is my background material for Basics of the Pitch, held on the 17^th December 2021.  The programme is a workshop on pitching for Korean startups.  The main coordinator on the Korean side is a Korean a management consultant company, Y&Archer Inc.  Y&Archer Inc. is a specialised accelerator company designated by Korea ministry of SMEs and Startups.  Their headquarter is in Korea, but they also have global offices in Guangzhou, China and Luzern, Switzerland. 

In business, a pitch is how you present your ideas, in a manner that gains interest.  The intent is to create a favourable impression of your idea, and most importantly, for yourself.  That support is often in the form of financial investment.  Perhaps, it is about putting forward a case why it is worth investing in your idea, whether in terms of time, association, or opportunities. 

The basics of the pitch is not about what you say, but what they hear. Putting together a pitch is an art in itself, and you need to consider what you want out of that meeting.  The average venture capitalist, or angel investor meets two or more prospects a days.  At a minimum of 250 working days, that is over 500 people.  If you cannot stand out, you are not getting that call back. 

A pitch is not a business presentation, in the sense of a slide show, and videos.  How many of you have ever seen Steven Paul Jobs in action?  How many of us remember how he unveiled the new iPhone then?  That is Toastmasters training at work, and he hired the best to coach him.  You would note that the entire presentation was carefully choreographed.  The way he spoke, the way he paced himself, even where he walked and looked at the audience.  Your slides, your videos, your data; must never be the centrepiece of your presentation.  Investors are investing in you, not a slide deck. 

In a good pitch, timing is everything.  Depending on the format of the meeting, sometimes, you have 3 minutes, sometimes you have 30 minutes.  The average attention span is around 5 to 7 minutes.  That means, in that time, if you cannot put forward a convincing argument for your idea, if you cannot get your story across, you have lost them. 

Every moment of airtime counts.  Perhaps you met them in the lift lobby, waiting for the elevator.  Maybe you bumped into one of the venture partners parking your car.  Sometimes you even move around in the same circles.  What am I trying to say here?  I am telling you that your pitch starts long before that formal meeting.  Impressions matter.  First impressions matter most.  These moments of airtime, these opportunities of impromptu speaking, they are invaluable.  That means you must have an elevator pitch.  You should be able to, in less that 3 minutes, lay out the gist of your idea.  It should be enough to get their attention, to elicit interest, to leave them wanting more.  This is your teaser trailer. 

Whether it is the elevator pitch, or the formal pitch, whatever the case, if you cannot seize their attention in the first 30 seconds, you face an uphill battle winning that audience over.  How do you do that?  Think about it: you have a startup because you have an idea.  Your idea is meant to answer a question, to fulfill a need, to address somebody’s burning desire for the revolutionary, the convenient, the innovative.  You begin by asking a question. 

One of the maxims of asking questions, even rhetorical questions, in a pitch, is never, ever, and I must emphasise it again – never, ever, ask a question you do not know the answer to.  Anticipate what they will say, so you are not caught off guard.  You do not want to lose control of the narrative.  Once that happens, your credibility is shot.  You may still get the deal done, but you are disadvantaged when it comes to negotiating the outcome. 

If you are confident, and accomplished, consider asking a controversial question.  Controversy and drama wake people up.  People love gossip.  They may pretend, but everyone has that bit of schadenfreude; they enjoy the failures of their enemies.  What you want is to ask a question that is seemingly controversial, and then walk it back.  You need to be able to create a fire within the audience, and then control the flames.  That is the 30 seconds of flame. 

The intent of the pitch is to get a buy in, and start further conversations.  You can get a yes, but the negotiation starts from here.  How do you build that argument?  To build from the opening statement, your 30 seconds of flame, you need a narrative.  Everybody loves a good story.  This story should be about you.  Telling somebody else’s story diminishes your credibility.  It must be your story.  Investors are investing in you, not the company. 

A good pitch never lays out more than three points.  Anything more, and you lose the audience.  You can have ten points why your technology is the quantum leap.  Pick three.  If the investor wants to know more for further due diligence, they will request for that information.  If they are not interested, you are wasting air time.  Those three points are the most fundamental to the business.  The address a need that may or may not be apparent. 

When you speak, there is that speaker persona.  There is a distance between the audience and you.  Your job is to remove the barriers, and by the end of your pitch, the audience feels that they are on your side, that they walk in your shoes, that they share your vision.  You want your investors to believe in your vision.  You want to instill within them, this desire that they are going to be part of history when they invest in you.  This requires a pitch that expands and expounds on a larger vision.  You are not selling merely an idea, you are not just pitching a business, you are not only offering a product or service; you are offering a lifestyle choice.  That requires creating interest. 

How do you create interest?  Remember: any pitch is not about what you say.  It is what they hear.  To create interest, you need to appeal to the audience.  What is it you are appealing to?  It depends on who you are pitching to.  This requires due diligence on your part.  Everyone has an agenda.  People with lots of money also have an elevated view of themselves, and their role in the world.  The potential investor needs to see his place in the Sun, not just the money.  Everyone thinks they are the hero of the story, adherent to a specific agenda.  Your pitch should be shaped in that direction. 

This is important because you are not the first person pitching to those investors.  You may not even be the first with that idea.  You may not be the first of that day either.  Other people are pitching financial projections, exit strategies, potential markets.  You need to give more than that.  There is no gain in being the same as everyone else.  You need to be memorable.  When those investors decide to consider you, and go back to make their deliberations, you want them to remember you positively.  They are looking for the next unicorn, and unicorns need visionaries to drive them. 

From a practical perspective, every pitch must address two things: replicability and scalability.  If it cannot be replicated, then it cannot be mass produced easily.  If it cannot be scaled, production cannot be increased to meet demand.  Without these, there is no viable exit and profit.  Once you can establish that, then you need to advance the perennial question: what is in it for them?  To answer this, you need to know who you are pitching to, and address their needs.  The basest is profits.  Investors want to make money.  Beyond that, people want to be part of winning change.  If you can sell them that, you can sell them anything.