In the train between Dresden and Prague…

I had the opportunity, in the past few weeks, to get involved in events related to pitching a story. The first one was StartupCamp Montreal. This was my 3rd time as MC at this ever-growing event. The second event was the Etincelle contest in Quebec City. Between the two events, about 15 entrepreneurs pitched their companies in total. At StartupCamp Montreal, they had about 5 minutes and in Quebec City roughly 2 minutes to capture and share the essence of their business.

Amazingly with everything you can find on the internet, read in books or hear at events, entrepreneurs still often have a hard time defining their target market’s pain and how they address it. In a pitch, there’s an important opening called the “grab” which is the part that makes people relate your offering to something they know, touch them emotionally or makes the light bulb go off in their head when they hear it simply because it makes sense - it grabs them. However, many entrepreneurs have a really hard time to get to their grab. And because they are not used to developing it, they revert back to defining their offering by focusing on their own company history and long technical explanations of their products. It’s easy to understand why they lose their audience after the first few sentences.

After doing these types of events for many years, I’ve come to realize that you don’t just put an entrepreneur onstage and hope for the best. In some cases, when they are seasoned executives, they may hit the pitch perfectly. That percentage is small. One recommendation is to offer pitch training in advance to better prepare the speakers. For the Quebec City Etincelle event, I gave a full elevator pitch training course called “The Anatomy of the Pitch” to 10 entrepreneurs to get them focused on creating the best 2 minute pitch possible.

Key points from the Elevator Pitch Anatomy presentation:

• Grab
• Problem
• Company category, stage and the solution
• Benefits for the customers
• Business model
• Credibility

In Montreal, we coordinated a group of experts including John Stokes from Montreal Startup, Austin Hill from Akoha, Philippe Telio from Embrase and myself to coach and make recommendations to the four StartupCamp Montreal finalists to develop their pitch before going on stage.

I was pleasantly surprised at both events to see improvements in all the pitches I heard. It demonstrates that, given the right tools, training and coaching, the true essence of a company’s offering can surface whereby the audience, the investors and even your grandma will get it!