{"id":363,"date":"2015-11-24T05:36:20","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T04:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/?p=363"},"modified":"2015-11-24T05:36:47","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T04:36:47","slug":"what-you-should-know-about-the-elevator-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/2015\/11\/24\/what-you-should-know-about-the-elevator-pitch\/","title":{"rendered":"What You Should Know About the Elevator Pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a well-known set of <strong>rules on how to make a good Elevator Pitch<\/strong>, which mostly focus on four aspects of form and content:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Be <strong>brief<\/strong> (your audience\u2019s time is limited)<\/li>\n<li>Be <strong>clear<\/strong> and direct (your son and grandmother should get it)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Underline the growth potential<\/strong> and <strong>market size<\/strong> (and make it big!)<\/li>\n<li>And explain <strong>how and why you can make it<\/strong> (show me the money!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The problem is that everybody knows all this<\/strong> and entrepreneurs are increasingly skillful when it comes to presenting their investment opportunities. As a consequence, <strong>a good elevator pitch\u00a0is necessary but not sufficient; you need one that is more than just a well-developed exercise<\/strong> and for that you need to acknowledge a few points:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>There are <strong>two distinct types of EP<\/strong>. In <strong>one-to-ones<\/strong> you talk to one person and in <strong>forums<\/strong> you speak to a bigger crowd in the framework of a competition or an investment event. <strong>You should not have the same EP<\/strong> for both as the dynamics are different.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The EP falls within the overall communication process of start-up financing \u2013 the most critical stage for entrepreneurs<\/strong>. This is the moment when more than 50% of investors decide whether they are interested in a project or not.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>One-to-one<\/strong>: You are not doing an EP to raise awareness of your project (how many times have I heard that!) you are here to get a meeting. You are buying NOW time from this potential investor NEXT WEEK. So your goal is to have your interlocutor take out his\/her smartphone and open their agenda. Don\u2019t take \u201cContact me through LinkedIn\u201d or \u201cgive me your card\u201d as a \u201cYES, I am interested\u201d: IT IS NOT.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Forum<\/strong>: <strong>Be<\/strong> <strong>prepared<\/strong> (know the audience you have to convince), <strong>be<\/strong> <strong>savvy<\/strong> (there are always at least 10 other pitches in your thread, make sure you are not number 9 or 10), <strong>be<\/strong> <strong>different<\/strong> (make sure you are easy to remember).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>In most cases it <strong>is the first time that those potential investors are seeing you<\/strong>. <strong>YOU ARE THE PROJECT<\/strong> at this point. You must show enthusiasm, passion and commitment (even if you just had a fight with your kids or your husband\/wife).<\/li>\n<li><strong>If you want a YES, you need to risk getting a NO<\/strong> \u2013 always finish with a call for action.<\/li>\n<li>There is no good reason not to train. It is a very competitive market and investors have a limited amount of time to take their decisions.\u00a0 <strong>Do not give them the opportunity to disregard your project because you did not work on your EP<\/strong> (a typical EP lasts no more than 3 minutes. If you practice for 3 in the morning and 3 before bed every day for a week, this is 42 EP minutes, and one thing is for sure: number 43 will be better than number 1.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Don\u2019t forget one thing: <strong>this is capitalism 101<\/strong>. <strong>The early stage investing ecosystem is a marketplace where demand for money IS GREATER THAN the offer of FUNDS<\/strong> (at least in Europe \u2013 Q3 2015), which creates enormous competition among entrepreneurial ventures. <strong>Don\u2019t miss your chance because of a bad Elevator Pitch<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a well-known set of rules on how to make a good Elevator Pitch, which mostly focus on four aspects of form and content: Be brief (your audience\u2019s time is limited) Be clear and direct (your son and grandmother should get it) Underline the growth potential and market size (and make it big!) And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1682,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[157],"tags":[89761,89755,45498,89756,70225],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entrepreneurship","tag-elevator-pitch","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-financing","tag-investors","tag-opportunity","megacategoria-mc-entrepreneurship"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1682"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/entrepreneurship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}