 Written by Nick Glavan I wanted to take this week’s blog to offer some overarching tips for the upcoming pitch events the entrepreneurial ecosystem will be hosting over the autumn season. These are some of the most common critiques I’ve heard over my past couple years working with startups and occasionally serving as a judge for pitch competitions. And while each pitch opportunity and set of judges will be looking for something specific according to their contests’ criteria, these tips hopefully provide overarching advice on how to put your best pitch forward.  Tell your best story Some pitch competitions may provide templates for slide decks, others may give you a rubric of how pitches will be judged. Sometimes you aren’t given much instruction beyond “pitch us your idea”. In any scenario, it’s key for the speaker to tell a story. Having a story sets the framework that helps the audience (including the judges) follow along with your pitch and understand what the idea is. Since most pitches have a time limit, using a story to lead your audience is impactful in quickly getting them on your side. All good stories have a beginning, middle, and end. For startups, the beginning is often about the world today, struggling with a problem and having no sufficient solution to solve it. In the middle, the hero of the story, your business, comes in to solve the problem. And the end will tie up your tale with support for why your startup has what it takes to be a success going forward and usually includes a call to action (“select us to win this pitch contest and we will…”). Keep in mind, your story should be unique to your business. It’s up to you to craft a beginning, middle and end with details about your startup to persuade the audience to pick you as their winner. Having a story framework can definitely help get the point across in limited time while keeping your audience engage. Simplify your slides Few things make me cringe while watching a pitch like overly complicated slides. If the slide deck is being presented by a speaker to an audience(ie not a “reader deck”), you have to make the slides support the speaker and not distract the audience. That means minimizing attention-stealing animations on the slides and cutting way back on the text. The audience should be paying attention first to the person presenting, not scrambling to read paragraphs of text on a slide while half-listening to the pitch. When it comes to designing slides, use clear and concise slide headings that state the major takeaway you want the audience to be thinking about(when read one after the other, it should sound like the story for your pitch). Limit yourself to less than 10 words per slide. Increase font sizes, bold, or underline really important words on the slide to draw attention to the most significant details. Use pictures or graphs to communicate your message more quickly. When many people pitch, they feel anxious and want to be able to look at their slides(even read off them) to feel more secure. Avoid the temptation to put your pitch script on the slides, though, so that your audience stays focused on the you as the presenter. Simply your slides down to just the major points that can jog your memory and keep you on track for telling your pitch’s story.  Create confidence In the few judging panels I’ve sat on before, and I know there has often been some anxiety on our side of the table, too. We are trying to figure out who the right winner should be and don’t want to make a mistake. In many competitions, the goal for the judges is to pick the startup that will take the prize money and make the most progress with their winnings. We want the winner to look back and say, “Thanks to winning that pitch contest, my business was able to succeed.” We want to support an entrepreneur’s journey that leads a company to creating jobs, making sales, and solving a really big problem in the industry. The pitch that gives the judges the most confidence that a startup can achieve those goals is the one that gets my vote. Again, each startup is different, so there are many different ways to build that trust in your pitch. Some startups might have experienced team members who’ve had lots of success before. Other companies have partnerships with industry players that can pave the way toward sales. Or you might have unique technological capabilities protected with a patent to give you a clear path to success. Whatever your unique selling point may be, be sure to use it to build confidence and convince the judges that picking you will lead to future success for all. Tractions above all else One key element I look for in any pitch is evidence of traction. For pre-revenue startups, I’m not looking for hypothetical sales numbers increasing over time or hearing “everyone wants it” with no backup. I do want some proof that the market is eager for what your startup offers and interested in paying for a solution to their problems. The biggest reason startup companies fail is a lack product-market fit. Entrepreneurs want to make and sell a product/service that they feel is a great idea, but then the market never adopts it. So to prove your startup does have traction and has sincere and reliable interest from market customers, I encourage startups to utilize customer discovery interviews (the focus of our I-Corps program) in their pitch. Sometimes that includes quotes from reputable source in the industry describing the issue they want fixed or detailing how a solution could bring significant value to their operations. Other times, interviews can be a show of the volume of feedback that you have collected and how it is used to make strategic choices about your product design, business model, or go-to-market strategy. When your audience knows that you’ve worked closely with your customer base and really understand their needs, they can trust that the offering you’ve created will be adopted down the line. The more traction or proof that your customers will pay for your startup’s offering you can include in your pitch, the more convinced the judges will be that your company will find success in the market.  Practice, practice, practice Pitching can be a high-stress situation, so you want to go into as prepared as possible. The final pitch is a performance, and like most performances, you need several rounds of rehearsal to get it right. Practicing your timing, what you will say, and the order of the points you want to make is pivotal to telling a story that convinces your audience to trust you with the grand prize. To really prepare yourself, you should practice your presentation in front of a test audience. Don’t forget to practice answering questions for any Q&A pitch formats too! For Q&As, your goal is to give clear and concise answers to inspire confidence and show that you anticipated a judge’s concern and are ready with an answer. Of course, things rarely go perfectly, so be ready for a presentation slide to have it’s format shifted, or be ready to handle to get a question you hadn’t thought of before. Practice for how you will respond to an unexpected issue, and know that your preparation efforts will help you navigate your way out. If/when you get caught off guard by a tricky question, personally, I prefer a clear admission of “We haven’t considered that yet, but I would consult with our advisors and perform some (customer discovery)research to make an informed business decision,” instead of using stall tactics or guessing your way through a rushed answer. Q&A usually has a limit too, so don’t eat up all the question time with a long-winded answer. Hopefully these tips will help you in your next pitch opportunity. I am excited to see some awesome pitches from our I-Corps grads in our upcoming I-Pitch event. The live, in-person pitch night will be on Tuesday, September 19 at 5pm at Bounce Innovation Hub in Akron. And every audience member in attendance that night will get the chance to cast their vote on who will take home $1,000. Our panel of judges will also select one of the five pitches to award an additional $1,000. We hope you’ll attend and cast an audience vote for the pitch that you like best. Register to attend on Eventbrite as space will be limited!
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