WOW!

The Art of The Pitch

Adam Lorant

alorant@bctia.org

Centre4Growth

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My Background

1998-2000

2001-2004

Enough about me…

So what do you do?

Agenda

1. Know Your Audience

2. Build Substance

• The 5 T’s

3. Package Style

• The Pitch Pyramid

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WOW !!! Source: Pennstatelive

Tune your pitch for your audience

• Co-founders

• Employees

• Professionals

• Partners

• Customers

• Investors

• Media

• Your mother

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Know Your Audience

PLEASE. Before you prepare a pitch or a presentation or a web site.

1.Understand who you’re talking to;

2.What questions they want answered; and

3.What you want to get out of the meeting.

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People buy in to a Great Story.

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Storytelling is an Art, not a Science.

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Telling a Great Story: Substance, Style.

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Substance

Creating Substance: The 5T ’s

T r o u b l e

T e c h n o l o g y

T e a m

T r a c t i o n

T r e a s u r e

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Creating Substance: The 5 T ’s

T r o u b l e

T e c h n o l o g y

T e a m

T r a c t i o n

T r e a s u r e

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• What problem are you solving for

your customer?

• How big of a pain is it for them?

• What’s the cost to switch from

their current solution?

Risk vs. WOW

Creating Substance: The 5 T ’s

T r o u b l e

T e c h n o l o g y

T e a m

T r a c t i o n

T r e a s u r e

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• What’s your secret sauce?

• Why do I care?

• What’s new, original and different

about your product?

• First/Best/Only

• How easy is it for a competitor to

replicate?

• Know-how or Patents

Risk vs. WOW

Creating Substance: The 5 T ’s

T r o u b l e

T e c h n o l o g y

T e a m

T r a c t i o n

T r e a s u r e

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Risk vs. WOW

• What domain expertise does the

management team have?

• Where are the experience and

expertise gaps?

• Who are the advisors & board of

directors?

Creating Substance: The 5 T ’s

T r o u b l e

T e c h n o l o g y

T e a m

T r a c t i o n

T r e a s u r e

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Risk vs. WOW

• How well do you understand your

customer?

• How many customers do you

have and what’s your growth

rate?

• What do customers say about

you/your product?

• What is your customer acquisition

strategy and cost to acquire

customers?

• What’s the customer’s

cost/benefit?

Creating Substance: The 5 T ’s

T r o u b l e

T e c h n o l o g y

T e a m

T r a c t i o n

T r e a s u r e

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Risk vs. WOW

• How big is the market?

• How much money do you need to

raise?

• How fast are you going to get to

revenue & profitability?

• What’s your pricing strategy like?

Investment Return Graph

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Revenue

Profit

$5M investment

Break Even Q11 2,000 Customers $1,000 per customer

Rel 1 Revenue Q5 $3.5 M spend

Beta Q4 $2.5M spend

Alpha Q3 $2M spend

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q8 Q10 Q12 Q7 Q9 Q11

1,000,000

2,000,000

3,000,000

4,000,000

-1,000,000

-2,000,000

Investment Return Graph

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Revenue

Profit

$5M investment

Break Even Q11 2,000 Customers $1,000 per customer

Rel 1 Revenue Q5 $3.5 M spend

Beta Q4 $2.5M spend

Alpha Q3 $2M spend

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q8 Q10 Q12 Q7 Q9 Q11

1,000,000

2,000,000

3,000,000

4,000,000

-1,000,000

-2,000,000

Seed

Round

Friends &

Family

fund concept

< $100K

< 9 months

Angel

Round

High Net Worth

fund traction

< $500K

< 18 months

A - Round

VCs

fund growth

$2M+

18M+ months

Substance

Style

Putting it all together: A Great Story

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• 3 - 5 words Concept

• 100 seconds Stand-up

• 100 words “Get a Meeting”

• 10 slide deck I n v e sto r

The Concept Pitch

Say it in 3-5 words…

• 3 - 5 words Concept

• 100 seconds Stand-up

• 100 words “Get a Meeting”

• 10 slide deck Invest or

The Concept Pitch

NOT your Tagline

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The Concept Pitch

NOT your Vision or Mission Statement

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The Concept Pitch

Simple, memorable description of your business, using

analogies to paint a metaphor.

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”Flickr for video”

“Amazon for rare, collectable, out-of-print books”

”AT&T for the Internet”

”Classified Ads for the Internet”

”Encyclopaedia Britannica for the Internet”

The Stand Up Pitch

Your elevator pitch.

Cocktail party conversation.

The 100 second story.

• 3 - 5 words Concept

• 100 seconds Stand-up

• 100 words “Get a Meeting”

• 10 slide deck Invest or

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The Stand Up Pitch

“Tell me about your company!”

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Make it a short, engaging description of

your business.

Technology

What you need to cover:

Trouble

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a

a

Team

Traction

Treasure

a

a

a

Sample Stand Up Pitch PetPlay is introducing a line of gourmet canned cat foods with the brand name Petite

Cuisine. These products look good, smell great, and taste great because they are people

food for cats! You may not want to, but you could eat it!

Research shows consumers love the products for their refreshing look and pleasant

smell—and cats devour them. Petite Cuisine is 100% nutritionally complete for cats and

is made from products you would buy at the meat and fish counter. The line currently

has eight items including whole tuna, red snapper filets, baby shrimp, and rock crab.

I launched and ran Fancy Feast, the largest competitor in this space nationally and ran

one of Nestle's international pet food divisions. I know this market well.

Orders are in from Ralph's grocery chain with additional distribution commitments

totalling 500 stores.

Capital is being raised in two stages—$500,000 in initial launch capital for 500 stores

and then a round of expansion capital of $3 to $5 million for 3,000+ stores.

Tech Coast Angels, 2007

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Breaking down the Pitch PetPlay is introducing a line of gourmet canned cat

foods with the brand name Petite Cuisine. These

products look good, smell great, and taste great because

they are people food for cats! You may not want to, but

you could eat it!

Research shows consumers love the products for their

refreshing look and pleasant smell—and cats devour

them.

Petite Cuisine is 100% nutritionally complete for cats

and is made from products you would buy at the meat

and fish counter. The line currently has eight items

including whole tuna, red snapper filets, baby shrimp,

and rock crab.

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Catchy concept pitch

Problem you’re solving

Understands industry and

consumers

Differentiated product T

T

I launched and ran Fancy Feast, the largest competitor in

this space nationally and ran one

of Nestle's international pet food divisions. I know this

market well.

Orders are in from Ralph’s grocery chain with additional

distribution commitments totalling 500 stores.

Capital is being raised in two stages—$500,000 in initial

launch capital for 500 stores and then a round of

expansion capital of $3 to $5 million for 3,000+ stores

Breaking down the Pitch

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BIG experience

Good traction

Understands what it will

take T

T

T

The “Get a Meeting” Pitch

• 3 - 5 words Concept

• 100 seconds Stand-up

• 100 words “Get a Meeting”

• 10 slide deck Invest or

The “Get a Meeting” Pitch

• NOT an executive summary

• NOT a product description

• High level concept description + team + traction

• Can be formatted as an email

• Target 100 words or less

• Delivery measured in seconds, not minutes

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Subject: Introducing Ning to Blue Shirt Capital

Hi Nivi,

Thanks for offering to introduce us to Blue Shirt Capital. I've attached a short presentation about

our company, Ning.

Briefly, Ning lets you create your own social network for anything. For free. In 2 minutes. It's as

easy as starting a blog. Try it at http://ning.com

Ning unlocks the great ideas from people all over the world who want to use this amazing medium

in their lives.

We have over 115,000 user-created networks and our page views are growing 10% per week. We

previously raised $44M from Legg Mason and others, including myself.

Before Ning, I started Netscape (acquired by AOL for $4.2B) and Opsware (acquired by HP for

$1.6B).

I've admired Blue Shirt's investments from afar. We're starting meetings with investors next week

and I would love to show Blue Shirt what we're building at Ning.

Best,

Marc Andreessen xyz@ning.com 415.555.1212 Source: Pitching Hacks, 2009

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Subject: Introducing Ning to Blue Shirt Capital

Hi Nivi,

Thanks for offering to introduce us to Blue Shirt Capital. I've attached a short presentation about our company, Ning.

Briefly, Ning lets you create your own social network for anything. For free. In 2 minutes. It's as easy as starting a blog. Try it at http://ning.com

Ning unlocks the great ideas from people all over the world who want to use this amazing medium in their lives.

We have over 115,000 user-created networks and our page views are growing 10% per week. We previously raised $44M from Legg Mason and others, including myself.

Before Ning, I started Netscape (acquired by AOL for $4.2B) and Opsware (acquired by HP for $1.6B).

I've admired Blue Shirt's investments from afar. We're starting meetings with investors next week and I would love to show Blue Shirt what we're building at Ning.

Best,

Marc Andreessen xyz@ning.com 415.555.1212 Pitching Hacks, 2009

Simple & concise email

Problem you’re solving

Good metaphor pitch phrase

Good experience

Good customer engagement

Call to action

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The Investor Pitch

• 3 - 5 words Concept

• 100 seconds Stand-up

• 100 words “Get a Meeting”

• 10 slide deck Invest or

The Investor Pitch

• NOT a description

• NOT a business plan in PowerPoint

• NOT about explaining, it's about SELLING

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An illustrated story about the

opportunity.

Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 Rule

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10 20 30 Slides Minutes Point Font

Target: 3 bullets, 20 words per slide. Lots of graphics.

Clean, Simple, Visual, Powerful, Memorable

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The sequence of slides tells a story:

We have a mission and a team that is taking us there. Why?

We discovered this large problem and solved it with a

product that has this amazing technology inside. We’re

going to market and sell it to these customers, with these

advantages that competitors simply cannot match. In

particular, we’re working towards these milestones over the

next few quarters. In conclusion, this financing is a great

investment opportunity.

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Contents of an Investor Pitch

1. Problem 2. Your solution 3. Business model 4. Underlying magic/technology 5. Marketing and sales 6. Competition 7. Team 8. Status and timeline 9. Projections and milestones 10. Summary and call to action

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The Problem

• Describe the customer,

market, and problem

you address, without

getting into your

product.

• Current state and

seriousness of the

problem.

• E.g. How you came up

with the idea.

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Solution • Introduce your product

and its benefits and describe how it addresses the problem you just described.

• Include a demo such as a screencast, a link to working software, or pictures.

• Make it visual. Make it real for your audience.

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Business Model • Explain how you are going

to make money.

• If you have sales, describe the value to customers.

• Describe the economics that turn the business into $X kajillion per year.

• Use microeconomics (each user is worth $1/year) rather than macroeconomics (i.e. if we can get 1% of a $10B market…).

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Underlying Magic or Technology

• Describe the technology

behind your solution.

• Focus on how the

technology enables the

differentiated aspects of

your solution.

• If applicable, mention

patent status.

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Marketing and Sales

• Who are the customers? How big is the market?

• You summarized this in your Problem slide and this is your opportunity to elaborate.

• How are you going to acquire customers?

• What customers have you already acquired?

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Competition

• Describe why customers use your product instead of the competition’s.

• Describe any competitive advantages that remain after the competition decides to copy

• Never deny that you have competitors — it's okay to compete. Against anyone.

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Team

• Highlight the past accomplishments of the team.

• Include directors or advisors who bring something special to the company.

• Don’t include positions you intend to fill — save that for the milestones slide.

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Status and Timeline

• Looking back, what

have you done so far.

• Dates, amounts, and

sources of money

raised.

• Include hires,

customers, revenues,

technical milestones.

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Projections and Milestones

• A timeline chart that

overlays significant

milestone dates -

funding, product

development,

customer delivery,

markets and revenue,

expense profit/loss

projections.

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Summary

• Summarize the key,

compelling facts of the

company. Make sure

you cover all the topics

that are in your

elevator pitch.

• Finish with a call to

action.

• Include your complete

contact information.

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The Art of the Pitch

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Concept

Stand-up

“Get a Meeting”

Invest or

WOW!

STYLE

AUDIENCE

SUBSTANCE

Technology

Traction

Team

Treasure

Who They You

$ $

Trouble

Storytelling is an ongoing process of continuous improvement

Apply

Test Critique

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YOUR HOMEWORK

• Email me your concept and stand-up pitches. (Oct 28)

alorant@bctia.org

• Prepare your Investor Pitch.

1 hour, one-on-one review.

alorant@bctia.org

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And they lived happily ever after…

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Backup

Contacts, References and Acknowledgements

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• BCTIA alorant@bctia.org and swear@bctia.org

• www.centre4growth.com;http://twitter.com/centre4growth

• http://venturehacks.com/pitching

• http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html#

axzz1DWuDlhhM

• http://www.startupblender.com/posts/004-your-pitch-sucks

• “30 seconds to pitch your company”, Steve Bayle

• http://www.pitchtheangels.com/

• http://www.flickr.com/