Making A Fast Pitch

It always takes longer to write less. I already had a pitch for a 10-minute talk, but the first pitch in the NWEN First Look Forum is a 3-minute pitch. And, I only get to do the 10-minute pitch if I'm in the top five, so the 3-minute pitch is actually more important.

The 3-minute pitch deck is limited to five slides which, unless you're the fast talker from those old FedEx commercials, is about the most you can do anyway. So, I took my five key slides, basically the five slides on the topics they recommended we cover, and then I crammed some extra points into them to make sure I covered everything. Then, I did a practice pitch to my NWEN coaches. Ignoring the fact that my 3-minute pitch took me more than 4 minutes to deliver, it was a totally flat pitch. Even I wasn't interested in hearing more. What went wrong?

Well, in trying to cram as much as possible into the time available, I took out the soul. I took out the excitement that I had worked hard to get into the longer pitch. And I crammed in way too much detail. The 3-minute pitch, like the 30-second elevator pitch and the one pager I discussed earlier, should be all about excitement. You don't need tons of detail in the 10-minute pitch and you need even less when you go shorter. Remember, the point of a short pitch is not to get investors -- the whole point, the only point is to get people to want to hear more. So, I scrapped everything and re-created the deck from the top down -- about customer pain, the excitement of addressing the need, and what the solution looks like. In one case, I had a slide with eight long bullet points. The new slide is just a diagram, which I've also added (in a smaller size) to the longer pitch deck.

I don't know if a picture is worth a thousand words in a pitch deck, but sometimes it can be worth eight bullet points.

Don't Forget Your Strengths

I've gotten a lot of advice on my slide deck for the NWEN First Look Forum competition. So much advice, in fact, that I followed it too well.

The first versions of my business plan and my pitch deck were so focused on the product, the technology, and all the cool things that we're doing for customers, that I neglected to talk enough about the business. I talked about how the technology scaled, but not how the business scaled. As one of my advisors said, investors will assume your technology will scale -- they want to know how the company can grow to be a billion dollar business. And I'd made the same mistake in other areas. The pitch deck (and the pitch that goes with it), initially had a lot less about the business side of the business than the business plan, so, off I went, removing technical stuff, and fleshing out the business side. It was looking pretty good.

Then, I went to my first coaching session with my NWEN advisors. We went through the whole deck and they gave me a lot of great feedback. When we were done, they asked a few questions, including a key one -- what's exciting about this? When I explained what I thought was exciting, they both responded, practically in unison, why isn't that in the pitch? It turns out that I had over-corrected, by a long shot. I had spent so much time working on my weaknesses that I had given my strengths short shrift. I wanted to make sure that everybody knew the business was solid, that I had basically left out what was exciting about the business in the first place.

In the final deck, I lead with the big vision and the long-term plan that is a key part of the excitement, then I segue to the first product and the customer pain that it's all about. The pain is a bit less exciting, but it's compelling. Elsewhere in the deck, I make sure to revisit the things about the business that I think make it really exciting. And, I try to talk about technology only where it directly relates to customer pain, solutions, or growth. The result is a significantly better pitch.

Why I've Been Quiet

You may have noticed that I haven't blogged much lately. There are a few reasons for this, all centered around the NWEN First Look Forum.

First, I've been very busy. From the time that I found out the details of applying for the Forum to the time that I had to submit my business plan, I had just ten days (plus three when they extended the deadline). In my case, I was creating a business plan from scratch. Fifty companies applied to present at the forum and NWEN narrowed it down to twenty companies. Next, each of us had to create a deck for a 10-minute presentation to take to our  "screechers" (screener/coaches) who were going to evaluate us and coach us at the same time. Fortunately, I'd already started a deck after the excellent pitch clinic from the Alliance of Angels that I'd gone to. That helped a lot. Even so, I walked out of my screeching session with a throughly scribbled-on presentation, having no idea if I'd made it to the next round or even when I'd find out. A week and a half later, I got an email saying I'd made it in and I had a new list of things I had to produce -- a deck for a 3-minute presentation and a 1-page executive summary. Plus, I revised the 10-minute deck and went back and updated my plan based on feedback, since I'll be using it for other purposes. So, not even counting things like meetings and seminars, I've been amazingly busy.

Second, while I was writing code and mostly doing development, writing a blog post was a great break. It was something different. You know, the right brain/left brain thing. But, now, when I'm spending most of my time writing and wordsmithing, writing a blog post feels pretty much the same, so it doesn't come quite as naturally.

And, third, although I've been very open since I started this company, I decided to be quiet about some details for a while. The reason for this is that there are some significant changes to the business based on lessons learned and I really want the Forum to be a real "first look." I want the potential investors in the room to be hearing the details for the first time from me, at the Forum, with my (hopefully) finely polished messaging. After the 24th, I'll be sharing more again.