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CHAPTER 11

YOUR SHORT
PITCHES

As an entrepreneur, it is imperative that you are ready to

pitch your business concept anytime and anywhere. In this
chapter we explore some simple techniques to better prepare
you for every pitch moment.

THE 1-MINUTE PITCH

All businesses need a good founder. And those founders have to
be ready to tell their stories at a moment’s notice.
“I’m always looking for the right founder,” said noted angel
investor Jason Calacanis. “I don’t need to know if a company is
going to succeed. I just need to know if the founder is going to
succeed.”
When you approach an investor, you are selling your
business, but, more importantly, you are selling the idea that
you can make your business a success. You know the adage for
writers to “write what you know”? Well, founders should build
what they know. Don’t go into an investor pitch with limited
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experience in your chosen field and expect to win. Go into a
distribution
pitch with a deep understanding
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your ecosystem, your environment, and all the major players.
Dazzle investors with your deep knowledge of the space. Then—
and only then—will you win.
And the 1-Minute Pitch is how you define yourself as a founder.
Our favorite way to define a business while noting your
value as a founder is to fill out this Mad Libs:

Hi, I’m [Name]. I run a new [startup/restaurant/shop]

called [your startup]. We [what you do] for [your
audi- ence] or [number of people in your audience]
using our [proprietary/unique/special] [secret sauce].

Those two sentences will save you endless amounts of pain

down the line when people ask you to define what it is you do.
Here are some examples:

Hi, I’m Zhang. I run a new startup called

WriteMan- ager. We offer simple document
management solutions to the 200 million small
business owners and employees using our unique
machine learning and categorization algorithms.

Hi, I’m Maria. I run a new restaurant called Far Sight.

We offer the Wicker Park Neighborhood in Chicago
fresh, farm-to-table soups and sandwiches with an
American flair, featuring amazing savory pastries I
learned to make in Torino.

Hi, I’m Kamala. I run Winston Robotics. We offer

the 70 million school-age children worldwide access to
advanced robotics kits made out of inexpensive but
high-quality renewable and recyclable plastics and
metals of our own creation. I have a PhD in
materials science and applied engineering, and I’ve
built robotic exhibits for the Carne- gie Museum in
Pittsburgh.
 Copyrighted Material - Not for sale, download, or
distribution
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Hi, I’m Paul. I run Paul’s Boutique. We offer

Downtown Brooklyn a one-stop shop for everything
Beastie Boys related, including rare vinyl, posters, and
books. I origi- nally ran the world’s most popular
Beastie Boys blog.

Note that these openers offer a few things: they identify you,
they identify your business, and they tell your listener what
you’re selling and to whom. They also talk about your secret
sauce: “Why are you— and only you—the person to build this
business?” This last point is vital. Anyone can have a great idea,
but if you are unable to deliver on this idea then it stalls.
Try it now:

Hi, I’m [Name]. I run a [startup/restaurant/shop]

called [your startup]. We [what you do] for [your
audience] using our [proprietary/unique/special]
[secret sauce].

This simple formulation is the easiest way for someone to get

to know your business. It defines how you’ll make money. It’s
also a way for you to home in on the story you’re trying to tell
investors.

THE ABCS OF A RESPONSE

Before you build a key message, it’s important to understand the
anat- omy of a response (see Figure 11.1). This is how you will
handle every question a potential investor asks:

Figure 11.1 The ABCs of a Response

• The question: This is what the investor will ask.

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YOUR S HORT P IT CHES

• The answer: Not every question has an answer, but at the

very least, the question must be acknowledged.
 • The bridge: This is a simple technique you can use to
move from any question to whatever key messages you
want to deliver. “I am not sure about that, but what I
can say is. . . .” “Before I answer that, I think it’s
important to first talk about. . . .”

• Communicate: This is where you will deliver your key messages.

THE ANATOMY OF A MESSAGE

Every message you deliver should be concise, believable, relevant,
and retainable. And every message should contain three things (in no
par- ticular order):

• A statement

• Proof points

• A soundbite (In PR, it’s called a “phrase that pays.”)

THE ELEVATOR PITCH

An Elevator Pitch is a three-minute short story you tell when
some- one asks, “What does your company do?” It should be
short enough to be delivered during an elevator ride. It’s usually one
paragraph that introduces your business, what you are selling, whom
you are selling it to, the key problems you are solving, and why
you will be successful. One of the most difficult requests for
information an entrepre- neur can field is this: “Tell us about
your company.” It’s a simple question, and in your response,
you’ll need to be careful not to over- complicate matters. When
speaking to investors your job isn’t to wait for the right question.
Your job is to deliver the right message regard- less of the
question. This is because every question they ask is related
to the same question: “Why should I care?”
Let’s start with the most common question you will get: “Tell
me about your business”:
 Bad response: GoToDoc is an amazing app that will
revo- lutionize healthcare for senior citizens.

Why is that bad? Because it tells the investors (or consumers,

for that matter) nothing about the service or why they should
care.
Let’s try again. And remember, we aren’t waiting for the
perfect question. We will use facts and figures to deliver our key
messages, regardless of what the investors asks.
Here’s our open:

Better response: To understand GoToDoc, you first

need to understand the state of healthcare in the
United States for people 65 and older.

In that response, we have acknowledged the question and

bridged to something we want to talk about:

People aged 65 and older often require two to three

times more healthcare services than younger people
do. More than two-thirds of these healthcare services are
subsidized by the government. And this trend is
accelerating. By 2030, the number of people 65 and
older will increase by 55 percent. Insurance
companies’ only way of dealing with these rising costs
is by increasing premiums, while the government is
raising taxes. Neither of these options is a long-term or
scalable solution.

In that response, we have added some strong and relevant facts

to prove there is a problem. Continuing:

GoToDoc is a supplemental, health membership

service that will connect all of an individual’s curative,
diagnostic, and preventative healthcare in a single
location, where a trained GoToDoc medical
practitioner (or advisor) will
 design a unique 360-degree health and well-being strategy
for its members.
At GoToDoc, our goal is to help people achieve
lon- ger, healthier, and happier lives, while reducing
healthcare costs for consumers.

In the second part of our response above, we have not

only answered what GoToDoc is but we’ve also quickly
addressed the opportunity.
Putting these three concepts together will result in a
cogent and memorable pitch that you can use to help investors
understand exactly who you are immediately. Practice this pitch
until you can reel it off without thinking. You will need it in
many situations, including during events when you’ll repeat it
hundreds of times.

THE 10-MINUTE PITCH

Trial lawyers have an old saying: “You should never ask a
question you don’t already know the answer to.” Getting an
unexpected answer when examining a key witness in front of a
jury could be disastrous. Likewise, for the entrepreneur, never go
to a pitch without knowing (and preparing for) the questions you
will be asked. This Q&A hap- pens in the 10-Minute Pitch, a
longer Elevator Pitch coupled with time for your investors to begin
asking questions about your startup. You’ll usually present the 10-
Minute Pitch in a boardroom where you have about 30 minutes to
make the people in front of you give you a check. Remember: In a
pitch, there are no bad questions, just opportu-
nities to communicate your key messages.
Turn on the news today, and take some time to see how
politi- cians answer questions from the media. In most cases, you
will see that it doesn’t matter what question they are asked. They
are there to deliver their key messages. You may not be running
for office, but your goal is the same. That doesn’t mean that you
should ignore or deflect questions. That’s just rude; people will
see right through it, and it won’t help your case. But when
answering questions, even
aggressive or rude questions, your response should always
contain a key part of your message.

THE 10 KEY QUESTIONS

In our experience, regardless of the question investors may ask,
they are interested in learning three things:

1. Does your business fit into their current investment portfolio?

2. Can your business make them money?

3. Does your team have the right background and

experience to be successful?

Keep in mind that investors will be using their time with you
in a meeting for the following purposes:

• To gauge your personality and temperament

• To see if you listen and can take advice

• To judge whether you are someone they would actually

like to work with

The following is a list of 10 questions you should be prepared

for, as well as tips on what investors are really looking for. Use
the ABC and message-building techniques to formulate your
answers on paper. Remember that each of your messages
(answers) should be concise, believable, relevant, and retainable.

1. What Unique Thing Does Your Company Do?

What does your company do? What makes your idea unique?
How will it work? If you hear variations of this question over and
over, it’s a pretty good sign that your answers aren’t giving the
investors the information they need.
If you sense this happening, try flipping the script and
ask them questions: “I’ve told you about our business model, our
core
audience, and how we will make money. What are your thoughts
on this? Anything you think we might be missing?” This can be
an effec- tive way of getting any issues or concerns they have out
in the open. This is also a good reminder that your job isn’t just
to answer their questions.

2. What Is the Total Addressable Market?

The total addressable market is often smaller than you think.
Selling hot dogs? Your market is every meat-eater within a five-
mile radius of your planned location. Find out how many people
that is. Building a recipe app? Find out how many users
competing apps have, and, if you’re brave, add 5 percent. This
assumes you will be slightly more successful than your
competitors.
Using the GoToDoc example, although the potential market
for its services would be anyone over 65, the truth is that it will
be only a fraction of this number. We would eliminate
individuals with no disposable income or technical skills and
focus only on those mar- kets where, say, senior citizens are more
active. Think this through. It doesn’t need to be scientifically
vetted, but it does need to be logical and well reasoned.

3. Who Is Your Customer?

This is slightly different from your addressable market. Who will
use your product? Why? Who are they, in real terms? Are they
entrepre- neurs in a certain city or industry? Are they foodies
with a penchant for craft beer? When you explain your startup to
investors in these terms, you draw a picture in their minds.
You create a world into which they can populate themselves
among these exciting potential customers.
For example, with GoToDoc, we see two primary customers:
(a) healthy, fitness-focused, and middle-class consumers aged 65
and older who will pay subscription costs and (b) healthcare
providers and practitioners who will pay to be listed as part of
our network.
4. How Will You Market to Acquire These Customers?
It’s possible you already have customers, so dig into what you’ve
learned and how you plan to scale this. If you haven’t launched
your business or product yet, then you need to be prepared to
address what you will be doing to find customers. One warning:
Investors do not want to see their money being used to market
an idea. Get a loan if all you need is money to market. They
want to invest in ideas, build products, and in some cases, provide
strategic support. The best ideas in the beginning are low cost or
no cost and easy to scale. For one startup I (John) created, I
reached out to the chambers of commerce in various cities so that
we could speak to many companies at once. Yelp had salespeople
call countless businesses around the world in order to sell
profiles. Both of these methods were time-consuming, but they
didn’t require large marketing budgets.
Note: It’s also important to be prepared to address a
secondary set of questions here: “What will be the cost to
acquire each new cus- tomer (CAC)?” A company’s CAC is the
total sales and marketing cost required to earn a new customer
over a specific time period. If you aren’t a marketing person, or
you don’t have a marketing person on board, we strongly
recommend spending some time building a plan and then
addressing it briefly and honestly. You can then have more detail
in your pitch deck’s appendix for those investors who want to dig
into this in more detail.

5. What Are Your Biggest Challenges?

Talk about a loaded question! Investors obviously want to vet
your business for any risks that might affect their investments.
But they also want to see how you and your team think. If you
don’t have an answer to something you feel is a legitimate
concern, it’s OK to say something like this: “Honestly, this is not
something we have spent a lot of time thinking about. I’d love
to take some time after this meeting, get with the team, and be
able to provide you with a more thoughtful response. Would that
be OK?”
 In the case of GoToDoc, they might ask about regulatory
issues, legal and liability concerns, and of course technology
risks. Use the SWOT analysis in Chapter 12 to think through
the major risks and threats and to outline what your team is
doing to prepare for and mitigate them.

6. Who Is Your Competition?

The best advice here—even if you’ve truly invented something
never before seen on planet Earth—is to never answer this
question with “None.” There is almost always a competitor or
two in any space. It could be the imperfect solution your
potential customers are already using. It could be a large, well-
funded corporation that might just like your idea enough to enter
the market.
In our GoToDoc example, it’s perfectly logical that an
insurance company could add these health-monitoring features
to make addi- tional revenue with its customers. Look at Uber:
when it launched in 2009, it was a one-of-a-kind play. But today,
Uber is competing with several ride share companies such as
Lyft, Via, and Juno.

PR O TIP

wing you have no competition. The goal is to show you are smart enough to see the obvious and not-too- obvious com

7. Who Is on Your Team?

There are a million great ideas, but only a few people will
have the skill of turning an idea into a successful, cash-positive
business. This is why investors may put more weight behind
your team than your idea. We assume you will cover the basics of
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your team in the pitch deck to prove that you have the right
background and experience to

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successfully run the business, but you should expect to be
challenged here. Think about how you will answer questions like
these:

• What are some of the things that motivate the founders?

• Who will ultimately be in charge (investors won’t want to

deal with more than one person)?

• What key holes do you have in your present team makeup?

• What are some of the things your team is good at and

not good at?

• What are your hiring plans over the next 12 months?

8. How Will You Use the Money You Raise?

There are generally three things outside investments will be used
to accomplish: hires to help you build your products, hires to
help you acquire customers, and general costs to run the
company. The answer to this question should be, quite simply:
build technology, hire key team members, buy supplies, or
purchase or rent real estate.
Never say you will use investor cash for marketing. Barring the
lone investor who doesn’t care where the cash is going as long as your
business is moving forward, admitting that you will use the
investors’ cash for marketing is very dangerous. Why? Because
marketing is a sunk cost. Spending their investments on marketing
is akin to throwing it away, at least in their eyes. They want you to
use their money to build something valuable that they can sell and
possibly recoup their investments on. You can’t sell marketing at
auction. If marketing dollars are the only thing you need, then
you may want to consider other funding methods.

9. What Is Your Company’s Premoney

Valuation? And Why?
Although this question tends to make entrepreneurs
uncomfortable, it’s going to be asked. But keep in mind, this
question is really being
asked to make sure this investment is a good fit for the investors
or their firm. Most investors are going to have a target for the
number of early stage companies needing seed funding versus later
stage deals. So, in the end, as great as your idea may be, it may
just not be the right time to invest.
This question is aimed at seeing if your team and key
sharehold- ers (both in place and soon to be in place) will have
enough financial upside to stay around long enough to make this
business a success. If you are reading this book—and outside of
some friends and family investments—this is probably your first
investment pitch. We suggest you follow the directions in
Chapter 6 on valuation and keep this answer simple,
transparent, and honest. And be prepared for a deeper discussion.

10. What Will You Do in Five Years?

As we’ve noted, almost every question the investors will ask will
be focused on revealing how they will make money with your
idea and if you are the right person to do it. So, when they ask
you this question, and they will, they aren’t just asking for
business reasons. They are asking to get a better understanding
of your personality. They want to know the following:
• Do you have a long-term vision for the business?

• Are your goals realistic?

• Do you really understand the risks (to their money)?

This is an excellent way to deliver your proof points again.

It’s OK to say you are in the business for the long term, and it’s
equally OK to say that in five years you would like to sell your
business. In the end, you will need to be successful to execute
either of these strategies, so remind them of your key milestones,
any revenue you’ve made, and your plans to get to one of those
two places in five years.

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