Phil Weinman, a serial entrepreneur, investor and StartupSmart mentor, says that he\u2019s heard \u201chundreds\u201d of pitches in his time, often from people who accost him in an actual lift after one of his speaking engagements.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019ve heard so many, there\u2019s not a week that goes by when I\u2019m not pitched to,\u201d he says. \u201cUsually it starts with \u2018I\u2019ve got a brilliant business \u2013 please sign a non-disclosure agreement.\u2019 I say, \u2018Well, first let me know what the idea is\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cA lot of people think they have a multi-billion dollar idea and that an NDA somehow gives it value. But it\u2019s not worth much if you don\u2019t get it off the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Scevak backs this up, saying: \u201cI always share as much as possible. People way over-estimate the chance of someone stealing an idea. As an investor now, I can really see the naivety of businesses that don\u2019t share their ideas. The pros of sharing always outweigh the cons.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Keeping it realistic<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Weinman says that he values one thing above anything else when he\u2019s being pitched to \u2013 honesty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIf someone says, \u2018I\u2019ve got this idea and I need a mentor, can you help me out?\u2019 I tend to gravitate towards them because they know they haven\u2019t got the best business in the world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cOften, businesses aren\u2019t very good at summing themselves up. They usually ask me for money. They can\u2019t look past their next salary day. What I\u2019m looking for is leadership and big vision.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou need to show passion and be honest. There\u2019s no way you can fake passion. You also need an end game \u2013 whether that\u2019s to exit, to be in it for the next 50 years or grow it to stage X.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe best thing you can hear is that someone says they want you to back them for nothing for a year. They put skin in the game and back themselves. That shows passion.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n Michael Fox, co-founder of online retailer Shoes of Prey advises: \u201cA great elevator pitch does four things: it sets out the problem, it sets out the opportunity, it sets out how the business is going to solve that in a way that’s valuable to customers, and, most importantly, it inspires the listener.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNot all of those four points should be explicit in the pitch, but each of them must be implicit and easy for a listener to arrive at and understand.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn’t have to and shouldn’t give all the detail – you don’t need to describe the features you’re building. The goal of the pitch is to inspire the listener to want to spend time with you to find out more.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHere are some questions to ask yourself before putting your elevator pitch together: What do you and others find inspiring about the business?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat are your key selling points? If you had to describe it to your grandmother what would you say?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIn my view the ideal elevator pitch is 10 seconds and at most two sentences long. Here’s what I imagine the elevator pitch to be for three of my favourite companies:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cGoogle: We’re the fastest, most relevant search engine on the web. We’ll monetise the results by showing useful, relevant ads to users.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cApple: We design and manufacture aesthetically amazing, highly desirable, easy to use consumer electronics products.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cFacebook: We connect everyone in the world with their friends online, and make it easy to communicate with them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Phil Weinman, a serial entrepreneur, investor and StartupSmart mentor, says that he\u2019s heard \u201chundreds\u201d of pitches in his time, often<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44286"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tips to improve your elevator pitch<\/h2>\n
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