I spent most of Thursday and Friday last week at the ‘Emergence‘ conference in Sydney, an event designed to boost the start-up scene in Sydney by bringing together investors, start-ups and industry experts. A similar event was held in Brisbane on Monday and Tuesday.
A terrific couple of days, with one significant blemish.
Most of the founders who had the opportunity to present to an audience of several hundred investors, and service providers of many types, blew it! Completely blew it.
Has nobody told these talented engineers and designers that you only get one chance to make a first impression?
The elevator pitch.
This is a very simple, compelling to your ideal customer, one sentence distillation of why they should buy from you, or more often, just keep talking to you. It is not easy to craft, largely because in one sentence, you have to leave out a lot. Every stakeholder should be able to recite this in their sleep, and should do so at every opportunity when meeting people. The purpose is to pique interest, and to extract the follow up questions, that can be answered by the delivery of the value proposition, which may lead to a further and deeper conversation.
I did not hear one compelling elevator pitch in the two days. Not one!
Use the elevator pitch when you have 30 seconds, any extra time you may be given is just a huge bonus not to be wasted.
The Value Proposition.
Your Value proposition is a more detailed articulation of why someone would engage in business with you. Still concise, focused, but designed to get to the core of who the product is designed to help, how that will happen, and what results can be expected. You know the delivery has been successful when there are follow up questions that enable you to go into a bit more detail about the problem you are solving, and the beneficial outcomes of use.
Again, last week, there was an almost complete absence of a Value Proposition. In its place, we were given lists of names of notable people who were involved, how many degrees they had, what the technology entailed, and some detailed project plans and milestones. In most cases, little that would encourage further engagement, although for a few, there was considerable value hidden amongst the verbiage, poor delivery, and technical jargon.
Use it when you have 15 minutes, along with a pitch deck that leaves the listener with no option but to be engaged. The best outcome to be achieved from such a line-up of consecutive pitches is that the audience remembers nothing but yours, and the individuals feel compelled to follow up!
If I was the organiser, it would be mandatory for those pitching to spend a bit of time with someone who could help them assemble their deck, and then get their message across. Either that, or hide the ego, and get someone with presentation expertise to do the preparation and delivery.
For all of that, the exercise was a great success, and warrants support from those with an interest in nurturing a successful start-up ecosystem, and that should be everybody.
