This is an overview of a workshop on how to give a successful pitch for a startup. The workshop is a collaboration between Heroic Voice Academy and Bay Angels, and the goal is to help startups, entrepreneurs, and executives prepare for high-stakes pitch opportunities. The workshop covers various aspects of a pitch, including the introduction, problem, solution, team, and use case, as well as market, product, traction, strategy, and the invitation or ask. The workshop also includes some best practices for getting the most out of the presentation, such as downloading the workbook, having an open mind, and being fully present.
Here is the whole script.
I want to welcome everybody to how to Pitch in High Stakes Opportunity, a partnership with Heroic Voice Academy and Bay Angels. My name is Brian Sparks and I’m an executive communication coach with Heroic Voice Academy and Bay Angels head of Global Marketing and Communication.
My co-host is Anthony Lee, founder and executive communication coach at Heroic Voice Academy. The goal of this workshop is to prepare startups, founders, entrepreneurs, and executives for pitch opportunities and high-stakes conversations with investors, clients, board members, and their market. The purpose of this collaboration, and similar events, is that Bay Angels is in the process of a global campaign to find top startups for the Bay Angels monthly pitch event.
If you are a startup interested in taking the stage and pitching your startup to our network, please go to https://bayangels.com/entrepreneurs. Before we launch into the workshop, I want to do a little bit of housekeeping. This workshop is being recorded and will be made available at https://www.heroicvoice.com/insights. That link will also be at https://bayangels.com for future viewing. For those of you who are, again, planning to take the stage with Bay Angels, I highly recommend you watch this and go through the workbook so that you can pass the rubric as well as be ready for the pitch and set yourself up for success. You can get that workbook at https://www.heroicvoice.com/gym.
Our goal is to give you an overview of what a healthy pitch looks like in 45 minutes. We will cut through the intro slide, the problem slide, the solution slide, the team slide, and your use case (or your story). Also, we’ll talk about your market, product, traction, strategy, and finally, the invitation (or the ask); and we’re going to cover that all within 45 minutes.
What are some best practices to get the most out of this?
I recommend three things:
- Number One: download that workbook. If you can’t download and actually use the work workbook right now and print it out and use it. Get out a piece of paper and take notes. Screenshot the slides that we put up so that you can then come back to them later and insert your company’s information.
- Number Two: have a beginner’s mind. Be open to these new ideas. A lot of startups overlook the importance of communicating their idea, and a great product will fall flat if the founder or CEO can’t communicate that idea. An idea, product, and even leadership are only as good as they can communicate.
- Finally, be fully present. One of our biggest principles is comprehension. There are nine slides and nine skills to understand. Here, we’re going to pick the best, best practices, both in terms of content and in terms of delivery.
Workout Number One: The Introduction
Why is this one so important? This one can be converted into what we actually all call the “elevator pitch,” but actually, this sets the stage for the rest of your presentation. It has to be clean. It has to start strong because here, we are talking about your vision, your value and vows, and what is important is you’re getting some very important key information — some hooks, so that you can get to the second slide. But before we get to the second slide, there are three things that we’ve got to cover here:
- Vision
- Values
- Vows
There are three specific questions that you could really fill in the blank and answer these questions:
- What is the vision of the world that you are creating?
- Your product or service creates a vision. Bring that vision to your introduction.
- What are those values?
- Pick two or three values you’re committed to.
- If you’re working towards a vision of solving something, that picture contained in that vision are values. The reason why you’re launching your company, and your product or service, is it’s in service of elevating a value in this world.
- If there’s one element that’s missing from pitches, it’s the vow statement. What is the statement?
- This is a statement where you say to yourself, “You can count on me too,” and you fill in that blank. Now, if you’re doing a personal brand or a company brand, it’s going to sound a little bit different. For the company brand, you can say, “You can count on us”. If it’s you as a personal brand, “You can count on me.” Not much change, but nonetheless, you’re making that declaration based on your vision and your values — what they specifically can count on you for.
- In the context of a presentation, make a bold promise about your pitch. By the end of my five minutes on stage, you will know why to continue the conversation with us. You will know why I selected the best team in the world to achieve this mission. So whatever it is, put a bold promise out there, both in your pitch and in every leadership conversation.
So, in our segue to the second slide, this is key. As you give your introduction, this introduction slide should really only be 30 seconds long. Hear that again: 30 seconds. I tell all my clients: if you don’t get to this second slide within 30 seconds, and you don’t hook them well in that first 30 seconds, you’re not going to earn the second 30 seconds.
Workout Number Two: The Problem and Solution
The problem solution slide is really your ability to empathize with your audience. You have identified a pain. And now you are introducing that painkiller. Understand how this is hurting your audience on a must-to-solve level (not “it would be nice to solve”). If you don’t get to this slide within the first 30 to 45 seconds, you’ve lost your audience. We all have heard the term, “connect with hearts and minds.” So having a problem and knowing the solution is an intellectual exercise. Of course we want to know that you can clearly define the problem and a solution.
What’s more important is for you to articulate the emotion. When you’re in the midst of a problem, what emotions are you going through? Anger, frustration, disappointment? And then, at the end of the journey, when it’s solved, what is that emotional experience? Family, celebration, teamwork? So problem and solution, in summary, is both an intellectual and emotional articulation. So now you’ve identified a pain point and the solution.
Workout Number Three: The Team
Disclaimer: we are slide deck agnostic beyond this point. Whether you are using the slide deck templates by Forbes, Guy Kawasaki, Sequoia, Y Combinator, or any of those variations, you can play with the order of these slides. Now, I’m not telling you (and I would highly suggest NOT) to play with the introduction and the problem-solution — those stay put. But your team slide could be in any particular order, depending on how you’re making your presentation. So just because we’re saying the team slide is up on workout number three doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be in that order. The first two do, I will stand by that. But we’re a little slide deck agnostic here at this point; and so when you get to the team slide, whether it’s at this point or later on, there are three things that we want to articulate.
I’ll tell you one thing you don’t want it to sound like, and that’s a resume. You don’t want it to sound like a resume. You don’t want to have a lot of information. But what do you want to have up on the slides?
- Let’s talk about when we have witnessed bad team slides: it’s because it’s information overload. There are 10 pictures on the screen, there are 50 logos attached to it. There are way too many words. And what you want to get across in a team slide is not that. The basic thing that I look for is if they have built a solid team, and more specifically, who do they count on? For example, if this is my team, who’s my left-hand key person? Who’s my right-hand key person? And what are the elements that make them crucial team members? So again, I don’t want to be reading their bios. I want this to sound like a friend introducing to another friend.
- Now, what does that sound like? If I were to, let’s say, introduce my chief technical officer, one of the things I would lead off with is, “The impact that our CTO has made on the industry…” just one win, one accomplishment.
- The second thing is the superpower (the skill) that they bring to our team. What is one thing that they do exceptionally well that could be considered a superpower?
- The last thing is how you count on them. Specifically, if it’s a CTO, I could say I count on my CTO to meet and exceed all the technical, regulatory, and legal specifications to make sure our product performs at and beyond expectations.
So that’s different. Think about how team slides have been presented in the past, right? I am rushing through everybody on the team, and what it lands at is it being messy and that you, as a leader, don’t know how to introduce your team. Introduce a friend to another friend.
What other nuances do you do when you get to a team slide? It could actually sound like a story. So for example, if I was introducing Anthony, the top of my mind is the impact he has on the world, which is that he is helping people find the word power to make a global impact with their messaging. His superpower is actually compassion, insight, and empathy. And his commitment to people is that they, again, have a global impact to make a difference. A lot of things that he talks about is ESG based, the global goals. So when we put together these messages, Anthony talks a lot about those global goals. So I love the fact that he is committed to those.
Think about it: how different it was when I introduced Anthony with just these three elements as compared to if I were to read off a paragraph from Anthony’s LinkedIn. With one, you’re probably being put to sleep. With the other one, there is someone behind this voice — someone behind this photo. And that’s the experience you want to have. I want to see a high-functioning team. When you introduce your team members, I want to see that you’re excited to have them on your team. You totally trust them, and you look forward to collaborating with them each and every day. That should be the tone of this slide.
If I can add one more thing, I have seen many times a team slide be unbalanced. So for example, you have a team of engineers who are launching a company; and there’s nothing wrong with having a tight-knit group of engineers coming up with a smart idea, but in terms of building a business, you need to have balance. So if you’re just doing the LinkedIn resume read, and they’re all engineer-based. You can kind of play with that and talk about what impact they’ve had on the industry, their superpower, their commitment, what their qualities are that balance this business and give the confidence to the investor or the audience that this team can move forward in a diverse way.
Workout Number Four: Case Studies and Personal Stories
And now we get to workout number four, where we cover case studies, in some cases, personal stories. Now, being a storyteller, initially, we ask ourselves, why is that so important in a pitch deck? Why is this slide so important? So this slide is sharing the experience that your customers have had using your product or service. And those will define or give testimony to credibility, competency, and character. Again, these qualities are what carry weight to build trust with your audience. And that’s what we’re trying to do here. You will have an ask at the end, but throughout the presentation, we are planting seeds of trust. You will not close a deal at the end of a pitch, trust me. You will have a second conversation and in that conversation, you’re stacking trust experiences so that people will invest with you, whether it be with money, support, or reputation. But in a case study, you are sharing the impact.
Let me give it one off the top of my head. We take these very principles and we help startups or anyone who’s looking to take the stage, and I could pick from a number of experiences when I’ve talked to somebody in the 11th hour, right before they take the stage, and have used one of these skills that shifted their presentation just enough.
Now, usually, I could tell the story, but it’d be even better if you could get testimony from somebody else who has used your product and said, “This is the best.” You see it all the time now with social media. You see it with testimonials; you see it with all these things. So you really want to be a good storyteller in this play, in this slide.
And here’s a challenge: again, 30 to 45 seconds that exemplifies credibility. What are the strengths that really came through in the use of this product?
There are two keys to a successful case study or a personal story. The first one, as mentioned, is that if I’m able to decode elements of credibility, competency, and character from you, I trust you more. The second thing I look for is whether it is easy for me as a potential user of your product to map myself into the story.
If you’ve taken someone from point A to point B, and that client is like me, then I can imagine myself going through the same journey. So the way that you tell the story must be organized. It must be clear, and it must be something that as a listener, I can easily put myself at any point into your story and achieve the same outcome.
Workout Number Five: You vs Market Competition
Our workout number five is the halfway point. We’ve seen so many of these slides presented in unprofessional ways.
Why is this slide so challenging for a lot of presenters? I think this is where a lot of companies really lose it. They get the collective eye roll from people who see pitches all the time, or they’re doing a data dump when it comes to talking about the product, or they should be talking about the data in the product, but they decide to talk about it during the use case or the intro. It’s just all over the place. And these next five slides startups are usually all over the place. And here’s the first one where you’re going to get this collective eye roll if you make this mistake: You do not want to talk about your competition as if they’re the enemy. You do not want to demonize them. There are really three parts to this; and if you think about it from, for example, the scientific community, it has been known as the scientific community — a family. Your market is your family. So you have the industry, and you may be used to hearing this as the TAM (the total available market), the SAM (the serviceable available market), or the SOM (the serviceable obtainable market). So as you look at these large market shares, you do not want to try to build up your company, your service, or your product by tearing somebody down. Two things happen. One, you don’t budge at all. You don’t stand, and your unique selling proposition, when you start to share, loses credibility. Again, it’s all about trust. So as we talk about the industry, you want to talk about this space that you love to be a part of. You want to talk about your competition as of what they’re doing well.
And then, of course, not everybody does everything well. And so now once you get down to your company, what specifically are you doing to contribute to this overall industry and that you are uniquely doing well, that your competition doesn’t cover (not that they’re failing)? Don’t say you’re a disruptor. I mean, that happens; but again, there is the collective eye roll of people who go, “Oh, here comes the next disruptor.” It’s overused, and the demonizing of your competition will get you this eye roll. Treat your industry, competitors, and your company as if you were all in a partnership. Speak with the voice of a trusted advisor.
Let’s just go back to the slides that have been presented. You’ve done a precise introduction. That’s going to gain you some points in trust. You’ve clearly articulated the problem-solution from a head and a heart level, earning more trust points. You’ve introduced your team in a way where you’ve transferred your trust in the team to audiences willing to trust your team. And then you’ve shared a story of success, and that is bringing your trust level to a high point. I want slide number five to be the opportunity to continue building that trust. So building trust means we’re not bashing the competition, and we’re not bashing the industry. Put out phrases like, “Everyone in this industry is committed to solving this problem. They’re dedicating their time, their resources, and their attention because the problem is that big” and “Each of my fellow competitors are focused on a different area of solving this problem, and I believe that they are all doing their very best.” If I hear something like that, I tend to trust the presenter. You don’t bash; you edify the competition.
Now you’ve built the trust and the space to talk about what you’re doing differently, right? “We’re grateful for our competitors. They’ve highlighted a few things to focus on. We are focused on those areas performing very well. And I think there’s one thing that we’ve latched onto that no one’s even looked at yet, and that’s going to make a difference.” Think about how that gets received. There is no eye roll. You’re looking at a professional in the industry whose voice you can start to trust and continue to trust. Speak with a voice of a trusted advisor. You continue to build on the trust that has been earned throughout the first five slides.
Workout Number Six: Product Demonstration
Now it’s time for the product to shine. You’ve seen tons of great product demonstrations, and you’ve seen some that, let’s say, missed the mark. One of the most important things, when it comes to connecting your audience to your message, is comprehension.
Now, if I told you I’m going to give you an hour to talk about what you love (your children, your favorite thing to do, or your hobby), most people could do it if they didn’t have stage fright. It’s easy just to roll on and roll on about what you love, but what is difficult is that here, you have 30 to 45 seconds to provide data that your product or service works. However, it’s the high-level points that you want people to take home. So very concisely and precisely, you want to say what it is: what is it that you’re providing?
I have worked with companies that have engineered this new idea, but they don’t understand yet what the industry receives it as. So for example, if you don’t understand where your social platform or your SaaS program will fit in the market, or you don’t know what it’s called, then you don’t know what it is. You may know how to engineer the product, but you should know how to articulate what it is so your audience and your market can receive it in a very concise way. You want to be able to say that in one or two lines, if you can.
Second, you want to go into how it works. What will the user experience? Again, this is not a data dump, it’s very simple. And then, you want to close up with how it will work for you. Think of social media again. How does it work? You’ll log on. You create a profile. How will it work for you? You create connections and make social proof and share ideas. You can really articulate that in a very quick line.
So again, here’s where you take all of that information and compile it and compress it into very easy, digestible phrases.
One of the message delivery tips that we share about this slide is prior, we were speaking with the voice of a trusted advisor. Here instead, we’re speaking with a voice of a teacher — an educator. So if we take a concept of beginner’s mind, present as if your audience knows very little about your product; and you need to use these 30 to 45 seconds to introduce what the product is, how it works in general, and to add that touch of personalization: how this will work for you.
It’s a very small conversation, and success means not data dump as you’ve cautioned. Success is: can your audience, the potential end user, take this slide and introduce it to someone else? (“Hey, I just saw this product. This in general is how it works. I think this could work for you too.”) So if your audience can replicate your 32nd product demo, you’ve just expanded the reach of your voice because you taught it well.
One thing that you will hear about a little later is our message portfolio — the product description. When you’re demonstrating how it works, we’re obviously talking about a pitch opportunity, but you’re going to also have to convert your product description into internal training, client training, and sales. So can these teams understand how to use and share your product? So again, keeping it simple — not making a data dump — is really how you build trust so that people can see themselves using your product or service and finding those qualities that you’re trying to express.
Workout Number Seven: Traction
A lot of us are in different stages of company growth; and when it comes to traction, there’s of course money that is typically highlighted, but there are other elements that we can highlight of milestones achieved.
What are these? There’s the pre-revenue type of traction, and all of this comes in money, support, or reputation. These are the three general areas in which you can demonstrate traction. And again, you can have pre-revenue where you have previous rounds of investment, proof of concept, industry standards being adopted, etc. There are several things that you can look at before actually showing revenue.
And then you could also have post revenue; and as the MVP is being developed, you can have revenue, support, or reputation at that point. This one is where you start to look for a sales team to find different ways on how you’re monetizing or showing traction, use, and buy-in from the market.
Now, keep in mind, here’s where we start having to also integrate previous slides. At this point, you have talked about your market. In what ways are you getting buy-in from the market you’ve previously described? Here’s where we have to be careful about also being slide deck agnostic, so some of these slides can be moved around. It’s difficult to talk about traction before talking about the market. You want to put out the target first and then show that you’re getting traction from that. So, money, support, and reputation: different ways of sharing traction.
I’m going to share a case study. I’ve been working with a CEO of a startup, and they are about to enter their professional realm of investments. So prior to this, obviously, the product is not shipping yet. However, a lot of traction has been achieved pre-revenue. For example, in the money category, go out there and speak — speak at conferences specifically. So, my CEO client has spoken at the JP Morgan conference for healthcare, where a lot of investors are in the seats. She has spoken at the HIMSS conference (an annual conference by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) where there are a lot of potential clients in the seats. So giving presentations at conferences is a way to generate future potential investment or contracts. Under the category of support, one of the things I love seeing is her being very active in government policies and industry standards. She actually got herself on an IEEE subcommittee on mobile computing trust; and as a participant in this IEEE group, she has the opportunity to shape standards that paved the way for the rapid adoption of her product. So that’s support. Also, as she’s speaking at these conferences, her executive team has been recruited from members who saw her speak. And finally, in reputation, one of the things that she published last year was a book on mobile computing; and now it’s recognized as an industry reference for those, in the field. In addition, she’s been interviewed by Silicon Valley Magazine. And of course, every media interview is an opportunity to boost not only your own reputation, but company reputation as well. If you look at Crunchbase (CrunchBase is something where people look you up, like what your number ranking is compared to those in your industry), she’s achieved a Crunchbase ranking of less than 200, out of 55 million users on Crunchbase. So in terms of traction, what I covered here are several examples of what you could highlight when it comes to this slide.
Again, the message portfolio worked for her, and I’m telling you, it’s the secret sauce to any founder or CEO who is up-and-coming at this point. If you can communicate your idea to investors, the market, and the industry, your reputation and support will go through the roof, and the money will follow.
Workout Number Eight: Strategy
What are the elements of a strategy that would make the audience lean forward?
Usually in a successful situation, what it generally looks like is a staircase. A really flat kind of staircase. Maybe you’ll have little lumps: you’ll have some ad spend and you’ll go up, or you’ll have some dip because you invested somewhere. But it’s all explainable and it’s generally this staircase up, in a good situation.
And so these milestones — the strategy, the expected outcome — are very specific. So when you’re articulating your journey, it’s key to keep things simple. Keep them within 45 seconds.
And here’s another tip: this slide could potentially have a lot of information on it. Again, you’re talking about, “Okay, in the first quarter we’re going to go from here to here. This is how we’re going to do it.” Again, specifics count, and then here’s the expected outcome. But there’s too much information on the slide. And I want you to remember the three-second rule: if the audience has to look away from you for more than three seconds — if they have to look away, read, look, digest for more than three seconds, and back to you — you’re no longer the star of the show. You want to have a lot simpler information up on the slide; and you don’t want them to have to look up there and figure it out for themselves, meaning you don’t want them to read, and you don’t want them to have to figure anything out. You want them to come back to you and listen to how you’re going to go to market in a specific quarter, in a specific time frame, how you’re going to do that, and what’s your outcome. This applies to every single slide.
The fact that you are the star is nerve-wracking. Everybody’s looking at me instead of my slide. Your slide is not your speaker notes, it is your co-star. A slide should just be an introduction to the words that you’re about to use. If the audience is still decoding your slide and you start to speak, every single word you utter is going to be lost.
Now, that’s not to say that the detailed version of your slides is not recommended, because we do recommend it. There’s a presentation version that follows this three-second rule. However, post-presentation, if you’re sending to a potential investor, or you’re sending to a potential client, you want to send them the detailed version — the one with all of your notes and bullet points — because you’re not there, right? The listener or reader is reading it for review purposes. So as you’re designing, always make two versions of your slide deck: one to present and one to send afterward.
Workout Number Nine: The Ask
This is what it’s all about. This is the invitation. This is where we ask for one of three things: money, support, or reputation. This is where it all comes down to.
And let me say this: when Bay Angels does its pitch event, we tell those who are pitching that they can’t make a public ask with money; and I would recommend you not ask for all three, but you can ask for two. And so if you are giving a presentation, it’s clear that you’re looking for financial investment to get to your next stage, to do a particular project, whatever it is. But you can for support, you can ask for a connection for a fractional C-suite, for a fractional CTO, for someone to come in to get you to that next stage. So I don’t recommend you rolling out a laundry list and saying, “These are all the things that I need. Meet me at the table or in the breakout room, and pick one.” You want to be congruent, concise, and precise throughout the entire presentation coming down to this ask: “We are seeking this particular amount of money, We are seeking this type of support, and we’re looking to build our reputation in these specific ways.”
We often talk about this slide with the phrase, “stick the landing.” For every single slide that we’ve worked on previously, we have focused on being very precise and concise. We focused on using a particular delivery skill to share that message. And because this is the last slide, this needs to continue. It needs to be crystal clear, rock solid, and to the point because you want to stick the landing.
Again, there are many things that you can ask for, but one of the things the ask could be — especially if this is their first time meeting you — is simply the next conversation. You do a good job with the eight slides, one or more points landed with the audience, and it’s perfectly okay. “Come speak to me. As I come off stage, come see me at the demonstration table. Schedule a call or a Zoom with me.” That is perfectly acceptable because the next conversation is a valid goal. In fact, sometimes it’s the most important goal.
Bringing it Home
There’s one last thing to talk about in terms of building trust with your audience. We have given you nine different slides to put your ideas into specific containers. The one thing that I make sure that a presenter drives home is the connection.
We call it the connection triangle, and what is key is that…
- You have you, which requires expertise and passion to connect to your message.
- You have your message. Your message then connects to your audience.
- You have to have a connection to your audience, most importantly.
With all these nine slides, we integrate the ability to make a connection with your audience through relatability and empathy. You can see that in the problem-solution slide: you can empathize, and you can relate. These qualities have to come out. We could help you get smarter. People who are in the startup all smart; it’s a prerequisite. You can learn the skills, the hard skills, and what you need to do. But this connection triangle — how you connect with your audience, connecting the head to the heart — is what builds trust. What has you standing out? What makes you a valuable leader? So again, we talk about connecting with your audience to relatability and empathy, connecting with you and your message to expertise and passion, and then your message connecting to your audience with the ability to engage and comprehend.
Why did Brian and Anthony start this Presentation Gym to begin with?
I’ve been witness to so many pitch coaching sessions where they go through your entire presentation, offer two or three tips, and bid farewell. That’s not an effective way of working out. I would never walk into a gym and see someone work out every single muscle and that be effective. Also, you can’t get into shape with just one workout. So if we look at the best practices of athletes, musicians, and even our soldiers, every time they’re in the gym, it’s a singular focus. And that’s why it’s not just the content on the slide, but it’s also how you deliver the slide.
What voice do you use? The level of passion. Your level of engagement. So we invite you in because that’s how we designed the gym sessions. We want you to present the slide well, but also to take whatever message delivery skill we choose to highlight from the triangle, and infuse it into all of your presentations and conversations.
Can you talk a bit about the message portfolio?
Giving a pitch is one of the many presentations you as a leader will be expected to. So from an executive communications standpoint, we designed something called the masterclass; and the masterclass prepares you for the whole set of important presentations and conversations that you’re responsible for. So everything from media interviews, conference breakouts, keynotes, hiring conversations, board presentations, town hall meetings, analyst presentations, etc.
This is a program that’s designed for you to develop not just the content, but also the message delivery skills to excel in all of those leadership presentations. You’ll find more details at https://www.heroicvoice.com/masterclass. Also, we invite you to go here and sign up for the 12-session masterclass. A great pitch will lead to a second conversation where you’ll certainly need a message portfolio. These are opportunities beyond your initial pitch.
We also invite you to join us at the Startup Presentation Gym every Thursday from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM. You can go to https://www.heroicvoice.com/gym to enter the gym and register; but also, you can go there to get all the resources you need to prepare for a pitch. If you go there, you can do any of the following:
- Enter the Startup Presentation Gym
- Download the workbook
- Download a pitch deck
- View the latest Presentation Gym
So if you want to go over there and see what this is all about, you can go check it out. I’m telling you, the communication of your idea is going to be what has you standing out. I have seen 10/10 ideas, but people only be able to communicate them at a four or five; and therefore they’re only perceived at which they can communicate. I don’t want to see startups fail anymore, so get in the gym, practice communication skills, buy a book, and if nothing else, practice, practice, practice.