[HN Gopher] Pitching your early stage startup
___________________________________________________________________
Pitching your early stage startup
Author : janhenr
Score : 169 points
Date : 2021-04-27 07:54 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stripe.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stripe.com)
| sokoloff wrote:
| Another great piece from Patrick, full of specific advice and
| grounded in several places with "and here's the one non-obvious
| additional tidbit that will drive the point home for you most
| helpfully".
|
| Only minor addition I'd make is in the section on Fermi
| estimation of market size is to end that with a warning something
| like "but resist the temptation to say 'and even if we only get
| 1% of that _huge_ market, we'll still be a success!'" You might
| be permanently viable and profitable (success for you perhaps),
| but getting 1% is harder than you think and is not a success case
| for a VC. But it's super-tempting and common thought pattern.
| What you're pitching and thinking of as an exciting modest
| success is another failure that the VC has to wind down and exit
| from.
|
| You might be OK with that outcome, but portray that you're
| single-mindedly going after 70+% of that market. If the investor
| wants to calculate what 1% of it is on their own, they can in
| their head; you don't need to connect those dots for them and put
| the fallback/safety case in their mind. (It's not entirely
| omitted, but I'd make it explicit as I've gone down this road
| myself.)
| guard0g wrote:
| Won a pitch contest a while back with this cheeky presentation
| that aligns with the advice in the article:
| https://www.slideshare.net/guard0g/deeprem
| iambateman wrote:
| I LOVE the "Act 1" concept. I'm going to borrow this ;)
| rikroots wrote:
| That was a fun presentation - I now want a tool which does that
| for me, but does it for everything: documents on my computer,
| files saved to cloud storage, lists written in notebooks, etc.
|
| I started working on a personal project a couple of weeks ago
| that might, one day, become something that could be a nice
| little pension if enough people paid to use it. As I was
| reading through the article I started to wonder: how could I
| pitch this to people in just a couple of sentences?
|
| It was an interesting exercise - the best I've managed to come
| up with is: "My product is a browser-based, collaborative tool
| for creating canvas animations, infographics and videos. It is
| NOT an Adobe Animator or After Effects clone, but those
| programs are an inspiration for the things I want my tool to be
| able to do."
| Jarwain wrote:
| I found a related tool a while back that I've wanted to try
| and integrate, as soon as I get into the habit of making more
| notes & such:
|
| https://github.com/Ravn-Tech/HyperTag#overview
|
| I guess my ideal tool would be able to recognize the
| different "contexts" that I'm in, and build a searchable,
| tagged timeline of my browsing and googling and work history
| in each of these contexts. Provide the capability to cross-
| link with notes in an athens/roam-like fashion and it'd be
| gold
| ignoramous wrote:
| This content makes for a compelling aside to _Pitching Hacks_
| book by Angel List:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120227074613/https://ventureha...
|
| See also: https://startupclass.samaltman.com/lists/readings/
| polote wrote:
| That's really great content compared to the low quality blog
| posts of strangers that we are used to seeing here. The guy has
| an impressive track of records, and give no bullshit non-survivor
| bias insights.
| scottndecker wrote:
| Interesting that these were the four types of businesses called
| out:
|
| 1 - B2B SaaS sold on the low-touch model, like Basecamp
|
| 2 - B2B SaaS sold on a high-touch model, like Salesforce
|
| 3 - Mobile apps
|
| 4 - Ad-supported websites
|
| What happened to B2C website where the C actually pays the B for
| a service?
| cj wrote:
| Nothing happened, aside the fact the most people can count on 2
| hands the number of B2C consumer services they pay for on a
| monthly basis. And half of them are probably streaming
| services.
|
| It's really difficult to get a high volume of people to pay
| small amounts of money in a sustainable manner.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| My friend and I have been somewhat succesful in this with our
| website:
|
| campalert.live
|
| We watch for campsite cancellations and email/text you when
| they become available.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Sensible advice, but my thought is that what everyone really
| needs is practice. What's the standard way to find a bunch of
| people willing to listen to a pitch?
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Join your local Toastmasters group. Search for entrepreneur
| focused dev meetups (we had an "unconference" in my area where
| you could give a speech on any topic) or the age old friends
| and family party now please listen to and critique my 20 minute
| pitch.
| dopeboy wrote:
| Attend pitch competitions. Don't take them seriously, just get
| the reps in and you'll be ready when it counts.
|
| Also, share your idea whenever you can with whoever you can.
| You'll generate signal over time.
| the-dude wrote:
| Give great advice : _be succint_
|
| Half kidding, the post is by @patio11 btw.
| kebman wrote:
| 1. You have to be something already
|
| 2. You have to have made a successful project already
|
| 3. If none of the above, try to demonstrate that you're really
| smart anyway
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-27 23:02 UTC)