You should be able to make your entire pitch into one sentence.
The biggest thing I need to convey to entrepreneurs is how concisely they need to reduce their pitch.
Why?
It’s very simple. The most important conversations that can happen that determine the fate of your fundraising efforts and even possibly the fate of your company don’t even include you.
Imagine that a fund is having their partner’s meeting and you’re scheduled to pitch. Two General Partners are passing in the hallway and one stops to ask about your company–one that she’s not heard of before. What does the first partner say to explain your company? The second partner has 15 seconds to create conviction or at least the preconditions for conviction in the first partner. How well have you prepared them for this conversation?
I call this the “Lego House” because there’s no time to explain everything you know about houses. Most entrepreneurs struggle because they know too much. They are not able to compress their entire pitch down into a single simple sentence. The lego house has a chimney. It has a window. Does it have rooms? Too complicated.
Yes it gets absurd. This is where “it’s Uber for Office Supplies” comes from. (and yes, that’s just dumb). Yes it’s probably offensive. Your entire life experience and everything you know boiled down to a lego house.
One mistake also is to distill your product idea into one sentence. That’s not what you’re trying to do. You are distilling your pitch down to one sentence. The pitch contains the reason why the investor should invest.
The lego house is the pattern through which conviction that you’ve built by working with one partner gets transferred to the whole partnership. Don’t leave it up to chance, put in the work.
Disclaimer
Information is provided for general educational purposes only. This presentation is not an offer to sell securities or a solicitation of offers to buy securities. Nothing contained herein constitutes investment or other advice nor is it to be relied on in making an investment decision. For more important information, please see disclaimer
