{"id":37567,"date":"2023-10-20T14:50:54","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/why-uber-of-pitches-are-useless-and-the-three-questions-all-founders-actually-need-to-answer-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:50:54","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:50:54","slug":"why-uber-of-pitches-are-useless-and-the-three-questions-all-founders-actually-need-to-answer-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/why-uber-of-pitches-are-useless-and-the-three-questions-all-founders-actually-need-to-answer-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Why “Uber of” pitches are useless and the three questions all founders actually need to answer – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You don\u2019t need old paradigms and buzzwords to explain your startup – the smartest people in the world don\u2019t use old paradigms to describe new ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019m painting with a broad brush here but I truly believe it. That\u2019s something I\u2019ve come to understand the more I meet with and talk to startup founders. I get pitch emails all the time, people who want me to write about, tweet about, or give them feedback on their startup.<\/p>\n

So many of them try to express their ideas by mashing up old ones – It\u2019s like \u201cUber for X\u201d has become a rallying call, and a fucking annoying one at that.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s just using an old paradigm to describe something new, and when you do that, you\u2019re tying the idea to all the weight and baggage that accompanied the old. You\u2019re taking the lazy option, and instead of trying to communicate your new paradigm, you\u2019re falling back on something that feels safe and comfortable.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the \u201cUber for\u201d products either. Whatever\u2019s currently big, raising money, or being acquired, becomes a paradigm that new founders use to describe or assign value to whatever they\u2019re building.<\/p>\n

Right now, people don\u2019t tell me they\u2019re trying to build a great electrical scooter. They tell me they\u2019re building \u201cTesla for scooters\u201d. They\u2019re not building a video chat app for teams, they\u2019re building \u201cSnapchat for Slack”.<\/p>\n

If I was a charitable man I\u2019d say they just struggle to properly express themselves without falling back on that trope or cliche.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not the right move.<\/p>\n

Defining what you\u2019re working on like that can only and will only hamper you. If you only define your product in the terms of another, you\u2019re not explaining the crucial information. All you\u2019re saying is, we copied some of this and some of that, and mixed it together. That\u2019s a pretty meaningless proposition. It doesn\u2019t tell me anything of value about the product.<\/p>\n

And if it\u2019s not the mashup answer, it\u2019s a collection of ridiculous buzzwords and phrases. I\u2019ve heard pitches that included IOT, Blockchain, Bitcoin and AI in a single run-on sentence. It made me want to denounce technology and become a hermit.<\/p>\n

It speaks to the bigger problem. Those founders try to sum themselves up in that way because they don\u2019t know the answer to the three main talking points that every entrepreneur should be prepared for.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the what, how and why\u200a\u2014\u200athree questions you have to be able to answer succinctly and simply.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine is in venture capital here in Australia and he listens to a wide range of different pitches. Some of them are good but the majority are tough to hear because the founders can\u2019t clearly explain to him what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll push them to go back to their first slide and express in a few sentences what they\u2019re doing. He wants to hear the answers to the three questions. And if people can\u2019t give him those answers, he\u2019s not going to give them the time of day.<\/p>\n

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You should be able to, you need to be able to tell me what you\u2019re building, in your own words. If it\u2019s a better scooter, or a video game about lasagna, that\u2019s fine. But express it as simply and carefully as you can. No buzzwords, no fancy talk. Just straight shooting. If you\u2019re building a word processor with minimalist design, say that. Don\u2019t call it a \u201cdistraction free content creation workspace”.<\/p>\n

You have to be able to explain how. How are you approaching your product? What\u2019s your methodology? Do you have something ready to go? Have you invested your own money in it?<\/p>\n

Probably more crucially, why are you doing this? Have you been testing it before building it, have you researched it, do you know that there\u2019s a market? Do you know people want it? Is there a need? Does it solve a problem? What does it do better than competing products, and is that enough?<\/p>\n

These questions are going to be hard to answer. That\u2019s a fact. I\u2019d be worried if they weren\u2019t. But being an entrepreneur isn\u2019t about having a smooth, easy ride, and it\u2019s sure as shit not about doing random crap without explaining yourself. That\u2019s not going to work out for you.<\/p>\n

If you can answer these questions, people are more likely to be interested in you. But even more importantly, you\u2019ll have a handle on what you\u2019re doing, and more of a clue about whether or not it\u2019s a good idea.<\/p>\n

Because just coming up with something isn\u2019t important, coming up with something that has a point a purpose and person in mind is the hard part. And you won\u2019t know whether or not your idea has legs until you try and answer what, how and why.<\/p>\n

As I said before, if I was a charitable man, I\u2019d think these founders are only struggling to express what they do. But the fact is, I\u2019m not that charitable.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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So I think a lot of these founders have no idea what, why or how they\u2019re building anything, and all they\u2019ve done is highlight a couple apps or products that work and mashed them together in the hope of a payday. <\/span><\/p>\n

Am I being too cynical? Maybe.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what else am I supposed to think if you can\u2019t tell me what you\u2019re up to in your own words?<\/p>\n

Learn how to explain what you do, learn how to answer those three questions and then talk to people. Nobody cares about your product that just sounds topical or in vogue because you\u2019ve mashed up a bunch of crap.<\/p>\n

And nobody cares about buzzwords. People want simple explanations.<\/p>\n

I think we\u2019re scared to make things sound simple. As though we\u2019re not completely certain about our ideas or our passions, so we try to make them sound incredibly complex and nuanced in order to make them seem more legitimate. That\u2019s where 50 page marketing plans come from, when all you need is\u00a0one to five.<\/p>\n

But simple is good. Simple answers are good. Simple doesn\u2019t waste time and it doesn\u2019t confuse the issue. Simple is what makes the difference between me giving a shit and switching my brain off.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m more likely to write about, or be interested in, an average product with a great explanation and definition than an amazing product that I can\u2019t understand. It\u2019s that straightforward.<\/p>\n

This piece was first published on Medium.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em>\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0Twitter<\/a>,<\/em>LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<\/em>SoundCloud<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You don\u2019t need old paradigms and buzzwords to explain your startup – the smartest people in the world don\u2019t use<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}