October 13, 2020

Before Preparing Your Deck Don’t Forget To Consider These 4 Pitch Types

The harsh reality faced by any startup founder is that they need to pitch, always. It is necessary to attract investors, customers, or just get people excited about your service or offering. So if you are a budding entrepreneur, then you definitely need to master the art of pitching. However, it is not an easy task to deliver the message across the right way.

100 million startups are launched every day, which is almost equal to 3 startups every second. Thus, before crafting the message, the startup founder needs to realize that not all pitches are the same, and it is crucial to pitch correctly to get the required result.

As a budding entrepreneur, you won’t always get the chance to design a perfect pitch for your startup. Thus, you have to stay ahead and keep your pitch ready beforehand.

The key to a perfect pitch is to know the art of adjusting the messaging according to the situation that you encounter. While nailing the messaging is the key, content is not the only concerning factor, the length and timing of the pitch are also of prime importance. Pitching for a startup involves a process that can be mastered by anyone. And this should be learned by your employees and collaborators. Anyone associated with your brand is the ambassador of your company, and it is necessary to make sure that everyone’s on the same page as you are.

Before jumping off to learn the art of pitching and what to pitch, you must understand the various types of startup pitch that you can deliver.

Depending on your audience and the situation, here are the 4 different types of startup pitch:

The Twitter Pitch
You all must be knowing that Twitter has character limitations. So this pitch is also something similar to Twitter. The pitch needs to be crisp and to the point, like a punchy sentence. Startup founders and budding entrepreneurs often rely on a method of comparing their business to a well-known company to facilitate the idea of their business. For eg. ‘It’s like Airbnb meets Facebook’, ‘It’s the Swiggy of manufacturing’, etc. This procedure is intriguing, however, startup founders also need to add uniqueness to it and highlight it from a different angle.

This pitch is apt to present when you meet someone at an event, and they have never heard about your company before. It is time to lure them with a catchy punch line and explain in a few words about your company. Once they show interest, go into more detail.

The Elevator Pitch
Just like its name, it is a pitch that would last as long as an elevator ride. The usual time frame is between 15 seconds to 2 minutes, however, an apt elevator pitch shouldn’t exceed more than 30 seconds. The idea is more pivotal as VCs and Angel Investors are constantly bombarded with lots and lots of startup pitches. So, if you have your target’s attention then it is likely that the attention will last as long as 30 seconds.

Keep the following into consideration when crafting a good elevator pitch –

Have a defined goal for your pitch
Have a brief explanation about the core idea of your startup
Communicate the key differentiators of your startup
Seek the next step after your pitch with a good question

This elevator pitch idea can be followed after the Twitter Pitch or presented to listeners who are open for pitches. This pitch can be also used as an alternative to Twitter pitch if you feel a mere punchline is not enough to attract your listener.

The Competition Pitch
This pitch is more stretched than the previously mentioned pitch types and needs to be presented with a proper pitch deck. This pitch deck is a lot similar to that of a pitch deck for an investor. In a startup competition pitch presentation, startup founders and budding entrepreneurs get limited times, hardly 3 to 5 minutes to explain their startup services or offerings and why it’s different. Thus, it is important to use images and not words. Let your presentation describe your pitch with a visual representation.

In a competition pitching, don’t get entangled in details, rather try catching everyone’s attention and make the most of your time.

The Investor Pitch
As mentioned earlier, the competition pitch and investor pitch are somewhat similar, but the dynamic of the conversation is extremely different. You need to present your pitch in such a way that your listeners are intrigued and want to delve deep into the details. Try to keep your deck under 10 slides and add as many details as possible.

While explaining to the investors highlight the problems, the solution that your service or offering will give, and of course, the traction quotient. This pitch is one of the most important ones which will help you get the funding, the guidance, and eventually, your dream will turn into reality.

As a startup founder and a budding entrepreneur, you must understand the difference in the startup pitches and work towards perfecting each one of these. The key to success is the right story and how it can attract interest and trigger emotions.

So, if you have your investor pitch ready get in touch with us!