Pemo TheodoreThe estimated reading time for this post is 1 seconds
Here’s a short video where I offer the biggest secret to the Perfect Pitch!
Its been my experience, since my first startup 7 years ago that the pitch & deck are crucial for every entrepreneur. Even if you are not raising money & running lean, you always need a good pitch & deck to find partners & customers. There is no escaping it. However I have sat through many pitches over the years and most Fail. These entrepreneurs may have wonderful startup ideas or business models however their pitches let them down. My former business in Dublin, Ireland put me on the other side of the cameras as an expert on TV & radio. I saw first hand that if you don’t engage your audience, you Fail!
So I was encouraged to read a venture capitalist Bryce Roberts, Partner @OATV, post on The Sad State of the Startup Pitch. Obviously many vcs & angels are subjected to the poor quality of a pitch day in day out & it obviously was wearing Bryce down. Some quotes from his article:
And yet in all of my 11 years as a VC, I’d argue we’re at the low watermark for startup pitches. It’s really bad and seems to just be getting worse.
Of the 3-5 new pitch meetings a day I take, most founders can’t be bothered to put any type of framework around the conversation (PPT slides, Exec Summary, anything), many consider “demoing the product” to be pulling up a browser and clicking around aimlessly while trying to describe what they’ve built, when asked what they’re are looking for in a new investor, most respond “speed, so we can get back to building the product”. I block out 30 min for these meetings, most can wrap up in 10.
To finish here is another quote from Bryce:
If you half ass it with an investor, you’re likely half assing it elsewhere in your business.
Maybe this shouldn’t bother me so much. Perhaps I should simply embrace it as a fantastic filter. But, I can’t bear to see founders wasting their time and mine with with sloppy, half hearted pitches.
We can do better.
