Tag: Pitching

The “Mission-Pitch”

To break through AI noise in the Bay Area right now, figure out your “why should anyone care?” pitch.

Important tip for international founders who have recently relocated to SF and are looking to build their networks here for customers & fundraising:

As you meet new people, it’s important to have an abstracted-out, 10-20 second mission pitch that clearly outlines “why should anyone care?”.

More than market analysis, facts & data, this pitch should have a strong underlying emotion that can immediately connect with someone who might have an overlapping world view.

There is immense noise in the Valley right now, and every space/ vertical has tens of startups going after it. All pitches sound similar, most founders have similar backgrounds, and all content looks the same.

Breaking through this clutter is hard, especially for folks who don’t have a high-signal, prior track record in the Bay Area.

In these cases, dialing up the personal authenticity quotient big time, and having a clear “Mission-Pitch” with a strong emotional pull can be extremely helpful in winning over new relationships.

In an ecosystem where every decent startup is flush with capital and early traction, founders need to 1) go deep, 2) go sharp, and 3) manage the psychology of market participants in order to stand out.

How to cold-pitch your startup in 30 seconds to VCs at events

Putting your strongest foot forward quickly, coherently and in an interesting way is the key to getting VCs to lean-in during a cold-pitch at an event.

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks of tech events, with SaaStr, SaaSBoomi, VC mixers, and now Dreamforce. Meeting hundreds of founders cold across these events, I have noticed that most of them struggle to quickly pitch themselves/ their startups to investors.

In fact, in most of these meetings, I was only able to figure out their unique strengths, progress, and fit with the problem statement after 3-5 mins. into the conversation. Unfortunately, most investors have short attention spans and given they meet multiple founders daily, their ability to recall is even worse.

This means as a founder, you have to achieve 2 things while cold-meeting investors at events:

1/ Leave an impression in the first 30 seconds so that the investor starts leaning into the discussion and becomes inclined to spend 3-5 minutes more.

2/ Post this initial buy-in, leave the investor with something of high recall value so you have a higher chance of a post-event follow-up discussion.

A. The 30-sec pitch

For the first 30-sec pitch, I recommend having 3 parts to it:

[The Grandmother’s Explanation]

followed by…

[Social Proof of Team]

followed by…

[Proof of Business]

a) The Grandmother’s Explanation means explaining what your startup does in the way you would explain it to your grandmother. Yes, most investors aren’t domain experts in your field. They are likely investing across sectors, and aren’t living and breathing your specific area/ problem statement. Assume they are as ignorant about your business as your grandmother.

I am literally shocked by how most founders can’t explain their startup in simple tech-layman’s terms. Barring a few, true deep tech startups coming out of research labs and universities, most enterprise software, SaaS, and consumer Internet startups should be able to explain their business in simple words. This is the bare minimum signal of clarity in thinking.

TLDR: if an investor isn’t able to understand what you do in the first 5-7 seconds, there is no way in hell that investor is going to lean in. Even if the person might appear to be listening, in reality, they are actually zoned out/ looking through you.

b) Social Proof of Team means talking about your credentials in a straight-up manner, without beating around the bush. These could be:

Education-related – undergrad and grad schools, unique course work etc.;

Work-related – past employers, roles, needle-moving projects, accelerators like YC or Techstars etc.; and

Execution-related – products shipped, content created, social following, word-of-mouth etc.

Especially for founders in the US-India corridor – we are taught to be overly humble and in most social situations, we tend to talk down our achievements. Unfortunately, you are faced with intense competition in the Bay Area from talent coming in from all over the world. You have no choice but to talk about things that make you stand out from the crowd.

c) Proof of Business means talking about the business progress of your startup in tangible terms. Things like user base, retention, engagement, number of customers, revenue, customer acquisition etc.

It’s important to remember that while providing Proof of Business, both “absolute numbers” and “growth rates” are important. So, frame statements like “we have $Xk ARR, growing y% m-o-m” or “We have Xk users, growing y% week-on-week purely by organic word-of-mouth. People are also now starting to pay”.

Most startups attending these events don’t have enough Proof of Business yet.

  • For the ones who do, make sure you talk about it as traction trumps everything, and especially at the seed stage, any traction will help you stand out.
  • For startups who don’t have much Proof of Business, you can still talk about proxies of business progress like the velocity of shipping new features, people on the waitlist, early design partners, and how they are deeply engaging with your product etc.

PS: An important recommendation for the 30-sec pitch format:

If you have compelling traction, pitch [Proof of Business] first and then [Social Proof of Team].

If you are very early and don’t have compelling traction, pitch [Social Proof of Team] first and then [Proof of Business].

The idea is simple – always lead with your strongest suit.

B. The post 30-sec-pitch part

Ok, so you delivered an amazing 30-sec pitch to Investor A. The person is now leaning in and wants to have a longer conversation for the next 5-7 mins.

In this part of the convo, your main job as a founder is to leave a high-recall impression on the investor. The person meets tens of new founders every week. Your job is to ensure that post this interaction, you go into the deal flow software for the VC firm at the minimum, and ideally, the person remembers you for some standout qualities and/or stories.

This is the “art” part of having a good conversation. There are no specific rules for how you build camaraderie and leave an impression. Everyone has their own style, and everything from body language and listening skills to storytelling and tonality has a role to play.

While I can’t offer you any specific hacks for this, here are some things I have seen work well in my experience:

a) Tell an interesting story – people don’t remember facts, but they remember stories. Instead of bombarding an investor with jargon, business numbers and technical info while having a cocktail, focus on telling an interesting story. Could be about your childhood, maybe something from your past life, or even something quirky that has happened while building the startup.

The biggest risk you have in a cold-pitch situation is to make it boring for the other person. A good story is something that brings a smile and/ or a questioning look on someone’s face. Basically, it interests them.

b) Bond on commonalities – the classic sales technique of finding commonalities to break ice always works. Humans are wired to want to belong to certain identities – A New Yorker, A Delhi-wala, A Knicks fan, a worshipper of Sachin Tendulkar, a backpacker, a wine connoisseur, a Japanese food lover etc. The moment they meet someone who belongs to the same identity, there is an instant connection that gets established, which is the first step towards building trust.

As you are chatting with the investor at a mixer, try and probe for some commonalities (where they grew up, went to school, worked, where they are living now). It will give the conversation much more substance and make it enjoyable for both sides.

c) Be genuinely curious…and listen – in my previous posts ‘Curiosity As A Networking Cheat Code‘ and ‘Networking at Events for Introverts‘, I have talked about the power of being genuinely interested in other people. It usually manifests in you asking good questions and listening more than talking.

As much as you are trying to ‘pitch’ in the conversation, don’t make it a one-way street. After the 30-sec pitch, focus on consciously giving talk-time to the investor by asking questions that spark an interesting discussion vs a founder-to-investor monologue.

C. Closing thoughts

I was feeling so frustrated listening to some awesome founders give such broken and unengaging 30-second pitches at recent events that I had to write this post.

Essentially, all the above inputs are based on 2 core ideas:

#1 Put your strongest foot forward as quickly as possible, and in a coherent structure.

#2 Make the conversation interesting. Tell stories. No one likes to be bored.

Happy pitching!

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