Master the Pitch

This morning I was going through the stack of business cards I collected from last week’s Youbico meetings. It was a good roadshow. Truly fantastic to see such a strong set of VC reps, professors, patent law lawyers, IP attorneys, developers getting into our ideas to revolutionize the web.

As the days wore on I was struck by how close Silicon Valley is to Hollywood: The Pitch Is King.

Both a movie pitch and a startup pitch describe a fictionalized nirvana of sorts. They’re both about emotions, experience, and — ultimately — about money.

Back when I wrote feature movies I used to trek down to Hollywood to do the infamous Pitch. Well, when I say used to, I actually mean I got to do it once or twice.

A Hollywood pitch is two minutes long. They can be informal (the famous you-bump-into-Spielberg-in-the-mall) or formal (you get rescheduled twelve times for a ten minute slot with a third level assistant to an assistant at a production company), both equally nerve-wrecking. Two minutes. That’s not a whole lot.

Before you even start building your pitch: if you cannot fully describe your movie in one sentence, your pitch will not be good. Second, if your movie’s premise and conclusion cannot completely be inferred on the five-and-dime (first 5 and last 10 pages of your script), you won’t make it. Third, if you hesitate, you’re dead.

Silicon Valley pitches are the same. Your business needs vision, true, but the entire story needs to be thought out. Don’t think you can wing it. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is everything.

After all, you never know when you’ll meet someone rich and famous to pitch to in the mall.