Guy Kawasaki’s Six Minute Pitch Advice
This Halloween, we were lucky enough to trick-or-treat (it was a treat) with Guy Kawasaki, who delivered pointers on changing hearts, minds and actions in a 6 minute pitch. Here are some of the highlights:
Pitches: eHarmony vs Hot or Not-style pitches
When delivering a 6 minute pitch, the most important thing is to grab the attention of an investor. It is not eHarmony where you fill out 40 questions about religion, your adoption preferences, or your mixed feelings on the post-modernist art movement. Pitching is Hot or Not. Get straight to your demo and leave out the bits and pieces and nitty gritty of your own life story. They are not looking for the perfect match but rather if your product is HOT or NOT. You want to make a memorable impression right away.
Cut the BS and demo already
Spend the bulk of your time demoing or talking about what makes your product incredible. Enchant the audience throughout, and think of it as a plane taking off. Six minute presentations are no place for commercial jets with a 3 mile runway; it’s time to become a F16. You have to blast off right away with high energy, because there’s no room for error when you’re taking off from an aircraft carrier.
One of these things is not like the other
With such a short time to pitch, adjective selection is everything in setting you apart from your competitors. If you and your competitor are both innovative, beautiful and easy-to-use, how will anyone know the difference? Find out how your competitors are describing themselves and pick the adjectives that make it easy for people to identify your advantages.
Take a look at the descriptions below for two products that both track movement and activity, UP and Fitbit. In each description they clearly differentiate that one gives real time feed back while the other is more of a system.
Do you love your product?
How do you get the audience excited enough about your product to pull out a check book, write a story, or even just give it a try? Before you can persuade someone else to do this, you have to ask yourself if you really love your product. Like REALLY love it. Do you get excited to use it every day, and think other people should too? If not, you might want to find a new product because investors will smell anything that’s not genuine, no matter how many times you practice.
If you do really love your product, then show it. Here are 2 people who are known for showing how excited they are about their products.