Being a founder

Being a founder 3 - The pitch and the hunt

By Ted Pin ⋅ July 25, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Prevailing startup philosophy is that the pitch is perhaps the most important tool you can have as an entrepreneur. It is responsible for generating interest and seeding adoption. Guy Kawasaki asks, How can you tell if an entrepreneur is pitching? His lips are moving.

I could not agree more. (Besides, who would disagree with Guy?)

However, what I did discover (completely by accident), is that your pitch alone might not be your strongest possible way into peoples’ minds. You might also need supporting material scattered throughout the Web to support what your pitch even though it is not explicitly mentioned. Having material out there can be critical for adoption.

For example, a highly valuable member of our team told me that he would not have joined the Intermz mission based solely on the 30 second elevator pitch I gave at Ann Arbor Startup Weekend–despite the fact that my pitch was well-received by many others. Instead, the reason he joined was because he had done some hunting around himself before my elevator pitch and found a demo video posted on the Intermz site. The demo video is what sold him on the concept. So if that demo video had not been available for him to hunt for on his own, he might not have joined up.  This scenario applied to someone who decided to commit work to the project. Imagine how powerful it could be to a user.

So, my advice to you, have material out there for people to find, especially if you can’t always reference what that material contains it in your pitch. People are getting better and better at going out to the wide Web and finding things for themselves. Make sure you have something out there for them to find that will support or supplement anything that you pitch.

Good luck and go get ‘em.

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