Pitching is an opportunity to introduce your business idea in a limited amount time – from a fews seconds to a few minutes. You can use a presentation to underline your speech or just do it orally. The main goal of a pitch is to gain new customers, investors or stakeholders to support your business. Our Rheinland-Pitch-Coach Vidar Andersen will explain the three types of an Investors‘ pitch and what you should take into consideration.
Further advice will be offered in our pitch trainings, which is also part of participating Rheinland-Pitch. Vidar Andersen, will give you important tips concerning your pitch deck and your presentation. Rheinland-Pitch is an open event for every Startup, no matter in which phase you are in (pre-seed, seed, etc). For further information, follow the link below or directly apply for the next Rheinland-Pitch! www.rheinlandpitch.de
The Three Pitch-Types
The High-Concept-Pitch
This type summarizes your business idea in only one sentence. That is why it is also called “Twitter-Pitch“. It is important to be short, but at the same time really precise, so that everybody will understand the main idea.
An often used way is the „we are the X for the Y“-approach, for example „We are the tinder for real estate“. To see more (funny) ideas of High-Concept-Pitches follow the link: nonstartr.com.
The Elevator Pitch
The speaker has 30 seconds to introduce the business idea and to offer a first impression about the startup. The name “Elevator-Pitch“ is deduced from the idea of creating attention of a potential investor within a very short time. For the length of the (imaginary) elevator ride with the investor, you have the possibility to convince the him of your idea and invite him to a longer talk in a follow-up. Also, you usually do not use further presentation materials like slides during the Elevator-Pitch.
The Pitch Deck
During a common pitch, which is not as short as the “Elavator-Pitch“, you hae the possibility to use presentations to underline your speech. Although you do have more time, it is important to keep the presentation as clean and short as possible, because the attention span of the audience usually is limited to approximately 15 minutes. The slides of your presentation are usually called „Pitch Deck“. In the following, we introduce you to a model which is recommended by many famous investors like David Cowan and Dave McClure. Your presenation should be about 10-13 minutes and should include all important information concerning your Startup. Make use of meaningful pictures instead of using to long texts. An impressive pitch deck is quite simple and minimalistic, but uses many visual details. The text should be spoken freely and and be included not on the slides but in the notes of the Pitch Deck. This way, you can easily send you presentation in PDF format.
Your Pitch Deck should create a related story. Storytelling makes it easier for audiences to understand your chain of thought behind your concept, which is the main goal of your presentation.
Die 13 Slides des perfekten Pitch Decks
- Cover
The first slide is the cover page, on which should include the company’s name and its logo. Furthermore, the date and context in which you are pitching. - The mission of your startup.
- Summary
This step involves making a short summary which ideally is the elevator pitch. Apart from presenting the main facts about your company you could also mention how you came to be invited to this pitch. - Team
Now you should introduce your team. Special know-how and past successes are important facts to be illustrated here. In case the investor has a good first impression of your team and realizes that you already achieved success, it is easier for them to believe in the prosperity of your business idea. The best order of introducing the team would be to end with the main speaker so that he can lead over to the company story after presenting yourself. - Problem
In the folloging, you can state problems which your startup is aiming to solve. Here you describe how you realized the problem and also which target groups or stakeholders are involved. It’s important to stress the negative effect of this problem. - Solution
As a next step, you present the solution of the problem by describing in a short and concise way. In that situation, it is advisable to make use of software, pictures or demos to convince the investors. - Technology
After introducing the solution, shortly explain how you can implement this in a technical way. Here state your advantages towards the competition because this will be the main point. - Marketing
After presenting your business idea and the product, marketing will be your next step. First state your target group and your market size. Furthermore, you should explain in which way you generate attention towards your Startup. Which channels do you use so that people get to know about your product? - Sales
If there are already customers who are interested in your product, it is important to think about a sales strategy. In case there aren’t any customers yet, the business model and how to make money with it is the determining point to explain in detail. - Competition
Why should customers buy your product and not from the competitors? To resolve this question, you should illustrate the competitors and in which aspects you and your product is superior. This could be special know-how or a beneficial software. - Milestone
This step describes the milestones you have preset for the following years. This involves aspects like product, team, marketing and sales. Furthermore, you should state your estimated expenses. This way, investors get to know what will happen to their potentially invested money. - Conclusion
The conclusion shows a vision of what the startup will look like in the future. What can be achieved in case the business plan works out and what is the main goal? - Financing
Financing deals with data. Therefore you have to illustrate how much money you need and for what you will need it exactly. It is really important to show what happens to the money, so that investors know for what they are investing.
So, are you ready to pitch?
By participating at Rheinland-Pitch, Vidar prepares you for investor pitches plus you get the chance to implement the things you just learned. And here’s the kicker: Everything is for FREE!
If you’re not quite sure yet and you first want to watch others present their business ideas, just swing by the next Rheinland-Pitch – the tickets are free of charge!
See all upcoming dates for Rheinland-Pitch and our pitch trainings:
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