Quickie Pitch Practice Tonight (4/14)

If anyone is interested, I've got to put a pitch together for the echelon 2010 folks, and would like to have a chance to get some feedback. If anyone is interested in getting together to swap pitches today, let me know.

 

We Came, We Pitched, We Got Feedback

Thanks to everyone that came to the first Pitch Practice of Pitch Masters HK. I think it was a successful first meeting, with everyone able to present their pitch and get some good feedback. Also was a good way of meeting up with people and hearing about what they are up to, so a good time for everyone. 

Pitch Sessions: 

It was funny, everyone else had no trouble to finish within the 4 minute window, except me. The basic format works well, and seems to be easy to deal with. I want to give it another round of trials, and see if there is any other changes needed to polish it up, but so far it works well. It works fine for any size groups, but it seems best with 4-6 person groups. 

The next planned meetup will be the week before CNY, so the week of the 8th. I'll put up a poll for people to see when the best day(s) are for people. 

Filed under  //   good times for all   pitch practice   pitching   success  
 

Pitch Practice - What it's about

For Pitch Masters, there are two types of meetings that have been proposed, the Practice and the Matching sessions. This post is going to outline what the practice session is about and go into some detail about what a pitch is in this context. 

First off, this session is broken down into three main parts: Meet n' Greet, Pitch Rounds, and Wrap-up. 

During the Meet n' Greet time, it is preferred to keep everyone milling around, meeting everyone and at least swapping a one to two sentence summary of what you are pitching. Generally this would be called an Elevator Pitch.

  1. The point is to come up with something that is similar to a good appetizer: sets the mood and gets them interested, but leaves them wanting more. 
  2. Try to come up with something that your mom could understand, you don't have time to explain concepts. So instead of saying you are "innovating on-demand food distribution" just say "we make it easy to order delivery food". 
  3. This doesn't need to have anything about business validation, but you might include some tidbit that is notable. For instance: "We help organize marathon shopping events. My partner and I have bootstrapped the development until now and have our first 10 customers actively using the system."
The Pitch Rounds are supposed to help simulate the worst-case scenario for pitching a concept or business. Think of the case of meeting someone that is a potential investor, but you know they are quite busy and this is the only time you may have to pitch them for a while, but they must be off in 5 minutes.
  1. You are extremely time limited, so you must choose your message carefully. 4 minutes only for giving your pitch, strictly limited. 
  2. No visual aids other than your waving hands and whatever you tend to carry with you on your person (phone, wallet, etc.).
  3. Try to think of the pitch as a story you are telling. Get your listener to emphasize with the pain that you are addressing or the problem you are solving.
  4. Ask them questions if they look lost or disinterested. Usually this would mean that you perhaps have put something forth that they just don't understand, but are not speaking up to get caught up. Try to find some common ground to start off on that they do identify with if your first approach doesn't work.
  5. It is good if they stop you to ask questions, especially if they are envisioning the details themselves, so don't get put off by questions and be prepared to have to modify the pitch to work with what they are identifying with. 
  6. If this is an investment pitch, the goal isn't to get funded this meeting, but to make them want to schedule another meeting to start talking about the details more. So, focus on what it is you are doing and get them excited about it. 
  7. Show your excitement and enthusiasm for what you are doing and make the listener feel it. 
Wrap-up, especially this first time, will be just a quick 5-15 minutes of group talk, either within your pitching crew or within the whole crowd that is there for the practice. Especially if it is noisy in the meeting location, this may just be within crews for that day. 

Last note, you might have noticed that this is set up to work for even small groups of people (4-6), but can scale as large as is needed with crews breaking off into smaller groups for pitching. The idea for this kind of meet-up is that everyone can do it themselves. There is no need for a big group to get together, and so it is hoped that this can turn into people self-organizing practices that are a good time and place for them. 

If anyone has feedback or some good links to share, please post below. 

Filed under  //   pitch practice   pitching   summary  
 

First Pitch Practice

Announcing the first ever pitch practice session for Pitch Masters Hong Kong. 

The meeting will be on next Wednesday, the 13th of January, 8-9:30pm at the Lan Kwai Fong Beer Bar (formerly California). 

The intent of this meetup is to try out the format of the practice sessions, which are intended to provide a friendly environment for rapid iterative practice of pitching to someone. Here is the proposed format: 

  1. 15 min - Meet and greet time where people practice delivering their Elevator Pitches. 
  2. 30 min (broken into 2x15 min sessions) - Split the group into two, one group takes the role of investor and the other entrepreneur, after 15 minutes, you switch roles. Each 15 minute round will have 3 iterations: 
    1. 4 minutes for the pitch and questions
    2. 1 minute for feedback
    3. After each time, the entrepreneurs for the round play musical chairs and go pitch to a new person. 
    4. You get 3 times to deliver your pitch to different people, and then you listen to other people for three rounds. 
  3. 15 min - Wrap up and group discussion, talk about things that were experienced, new books, techniques, etc.

For those coming to this meeting, it doesn't matter if you are an entrepreneur, investor, or just interested in trying this out, everyone must have a pitch presentation ready of some sort, no spectators.

I'll put together some more posts that help to shape up what an elevator pitch and the short pitch could be. The topics are up to you, but typically should be related to selling someone (an investor, a client, etc.) on the concept of a business, product, or service.

We will be following this up with additional practice sessions and will be putting together a related meeting to bring in local investors for taking the skills learned in practice sessions into practical application. 

Filed under  //   meeting   practice session   you must pitch if it is your first time