Jim* had an interesting product, but I was having trouble following his pitch. He skipped from idea to idea and feature to feature, leaving me confused.

Jim: “SaaSy is a sales tool for teams. Here’s the messages screen. This is where you go to book a meeting. We’re planning on adding a Slack integration once we get enough resources from this fundraise.”

I sat there, quietly stumped.

“What’s the real value proposition here?” I thought to myself. “And if I can’t understand it, how will a customer?”

Sell a Vision, Not Just a Product

Some founders have a solid product with decent traction. But they just can’t tell the story.

I pay close attention to a startup’s metrics. But if the founder can’t sell the vision, I’m out.

Scott Kupor, Managing Partner of Andreessen Horowitz, emphasizes how important a great pitch is in his excellent book, The Secrets of Sand Hill Road.

“….VCs are trying to determine whether this founder will be able to create a compelling story around the company mission in order to attract great engineers, executives, sales and marketing people, etc. In the same vein, the founder has to be able to attract customers to buy the product, partners to help distribute the product, and, eventually, other VCs to fund the business beyond the initial round of financing. Will the founder be able to explain her mission in a way that causes others to want to join her on this mission?”

So much of being a founder is selling — to customers, employees or investors. If you can’t do it, you’ve got big problems.

How to Get It Right

How could Jim do better? Here’s what I’d like to see…

Jim: Our product, SaaSy, will change the way sales is done forever. Salespeople can close deals 10x faster.

Me: Can we run through a demo?

Jim: Sure! The customer comes to the dashboard, where he sees a list of top prospects from LinkedIn. These are the people most similar to those who have bought in the past.

Me: Cool!

Jim: Then, he can send automated messages to each of them to book a meeting. Each message is personalized.

And it all happens with one click.

Now, he can spend less time sending cold messages and more time meeting with great leads.

Jim has clearly shown not just what his product does, but why it matters.

No one is going to be impressed with a tour of features. But show them you’re solving a real problem they have, and they’ll be reaching for their wallet.

Keep Your Presentation Tight

In early stage startups, the founder does most of the selling. If he rambles and can’t quickly show his product’s value, he won’t make many sales.

Keep your pitch tight and focused. Clearly tell me what the company does and why it matters.

You should be able to demo a product in about 3 minutes. Save lots of time for questions.

When you answer a question, don’t go into a long story. Your answer should take about as much time as it took to ask the question.

Wrap-Up

When a founder presents a compelling vision and shows me how he’ll get there, I get excited. So do customers and employees.

Get lost in details, and you’ll lose your audience as well.

What do you think makes a great pitch? Leave a comment and let us know!

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*Jim is a composite, not an actual person.

More on tech:

The Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Part One)

The Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Part Two)

From AI to Satellites, US Dominates All Competition

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