Nivi · May 21st, 2008
Anthony Stevens read our article on high concept pitches and decided to write a high concept pitch for his startup:
“So, let’s see: my startup is Crowdify, a tool for brand and reputation managers to discover new insights into consumers’ attitudes about their subjects and make better decisions about marketing and public relations strategy. We do this through semantic analysis applied to consumer-generated correlations among and between brands and reference data. Further, we utilize social-networking metaphors to keep interesting information flowing back and forth between branding people and the consuming public.”
Most elevator pitches look like this: long, boring, senseless, and ineffective. You probably stopped reading after the first sentence. Or the pitch looked so long you didn’t read it at all.
Fortunately, Anthony came to same conclusion:
“That’s a little wordy, especially for a business card, so let’s try a little high-concept pitch development. Hmm… relations that people will understand. “A for B”, where A is a known brand in my space, and B is the target audience… how about:
Facebook for Brands
“I think I like it! Not least of which is the rumor floating around today that Facebook is about to be acquired by Microsoft for something like 15 to 20 billion dollars.”
I like it too. Anthony started with a long paragraph that actually hurt him more than it helped. Then he turned it into a high concept pitch that opens the door to a conversation about his company.
Topics Case Studies · Pitching
Nivi – are you a Battlestar Galactica fan?
Unfortunately, yes.
Sorry, but this one doesn’t work for me. “Facebook for xyz” suggests a very cliche’d and low level understanding of whatever market “xyz” represents and if anything shows that the entrepeneur doesn’t understand that competing with Facebook is a bad idea. In my experience being pitched, I am put off if any entrepreneur thinks I need it to be dumbed down to that extreme.
I’m all for taking the above 50+ word description and condensing it but I doubt that any worthwhile deal has ever come out of a pithy 3 word lead in.
The original elevator pitch was giving the right information in a condensed yet precise manner.
The short pitch looks like a slogan and leave too much room for interpretation, tapping on the hype of the moment (Facebook).
The hybrid speaks in deeper truths. You have to let her elevator pitch “wash over your associative minds”.
So is the elevator pitch for elevator pitches: “Tweets for business ideas”?
I grimace whenever I hear a startup described as “We’re Twitter/Facebook/Flickr/Youtube for $X”. It’s such a cliched way of describing a company, and at least to me, it is a hint that you’re not really focused on building something people want, but are instead just following the hype.
Todd Allen on Technology : Fix Your Pitch.. Advice I need to take. // May 22, 2008 at 4:17 pm
[…] winds up confusing and too detailed. Several iterations later I’ve got it down… if I’m lucky. This post pretty much starts off the way I’d say something at first! Good info on why you need to keep it […]
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Facebook for Brands =
Where Nike can SuperPoke Adidas
and? I still not sure what it does…
Startup Failures | Venture Adventure // Jul 28, 2008 at 5:20 pm
[…] this, to me, is a symptom of the web 2.0 mentality of creating a business web-site based on a high concept pitch with no plan and no real leadership. I guess when the VC is only investing a few hundred thousand […]