If you’re an entrepreneur or startup team, it can take months or even years to get a chance to sit in front of investors and pitch your story. Luckily, keynote speaker and prolific technology journalist Josh Constine wants to share some of his secrets for successful pitches.
Constine is a top tech industry analyst who specializes in social products and emerging technologies. He has also monitored hundreds of on-stage talks with notable figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Edward Snowden, and U.S. Senator Cory Booker.
As one of the top media resources in Silicon Valley, he says that the best pitches to press and investors almost always follow this set formula:
Introduce the problem.
You want to convey that your startup is something the world needs says Constine. If you start by describing the problem, then anybody can empathize with why there needs to be a solution. However, to keep the table’s attention describe the problem as succinctly and passionately as possible.
“You’re never going to get anybody else excited about your startup if you don’t seem excited yourself,” said Constine. “So I always recommend that when startups go into pitches that they have to feel really, truly excited.”
Once you’re getting that emotion across—usually through a very well-practiced pitch—you can focus more on the tone and delivery than on the actual statistics and descriptions. “That’s how you’re going to convince someone to write about or fund something that you’re building that doesn’t exist yet,” he said.
Explain the solution.
Once you’ve established the problem, describe how your product actually fixes this problem. Take the time to make sure you’re giving investors a clear reason of why your startup should exit.
“When you describe your pain point you want to make sure that you’re an exponential innovation; this is different than linear innovation,” said Constine. “If you’re struggling to express how you’re an exponential innovation then maybe you aren’t solving something in a new way and need to go back to the drawing board instead of trying to pitch something that doesn’t have a ton of potential.”
Linear innovation is a product that is a little better than something that already exists in the market. It will be difficult to convince investors you’ll be able to steal customers away from an existing product that is already pretty good. Make something that is hard to copy.
Then he suggests that you provide how your product’s going to make money and expand into adjacent markets to become a truly enormous company.
Provide the evidence.
As part of your evidence and why you’re going to succeed here, you need to tell why you have a superhero origin story says Constine. This is usually a formative experience from your childhood or one of your past work experiences that motivated you to fix this problem no matter how hard it gets.
“A lot of startups don’t actually fail because of competition, they fail because the founders quit,” said Constine. “So you need to show evidence you’re going to be the one to carry it across the finish line to an acquisition or IPO.”
Your superhero story helps explain make your product defensible. It’s what shows investors that no matter what happens, or how hard it gets, you’ll be the one to succeed.
