Elevator Pitch

I already had a post about the making of the Elevator Pitch by our team in Entrepreneurship class. But I wanted to give a bit broader review of that particular class and talk in general terms about the cases that were presented by various groups.

I really found that exercise quite stimulating. It also provided the opportunity to learn both from the strengths and the weaknesses of various elevator pitches.

There were total 9 teams presenting their elevator pitches at the class. Each team had 3 minutes for the pitch, and then had to answer questions from other students in the class. Some teams had really vested themselves into this project. I saw them having meetings after class for two weeks, and I have no doubt, judging by the level of their performance, that they had some out of class meetings too.

The projects presented were in a very wide range in every aspect:

from non-profit student organization (actually doing the work already) to hi-tech pets gadgets
from quite plausible, to so complicated, that its practical execution is highly unlikely
from meeting reasonably conceivable needs to frivolously outlandish
from requiring hardly any investment, rather just “sweat equity”, to initial funding in hundreds of thousands of dollars

The same variety goes for the presentation modes. Two teams had just one person doing the presentation, one team had the whole group covering various aspects of the business venture, and everything in between. A couple of presentation were very well rehearsed quite entertaining mini-shows (incidentally, both of them were around food establishments) and some were just rather unexciting recitals. Some were very clear in both mission statement and covering its basic implementation, and some were not much more than wishful thinking.

I personally thought from the start that the presented project should be feasible, not just cute or utterly made up with no realistic way of implementing it. Overall, as I said before, I found the great value of this exercise in the very broad scope of these presentations. A few lessons I took from it:

Make the mission statement clear and understandable
Identify some real need that may have the market beyond meeting your own whimsical imagination
Think through the implementation stages in realistic terms, not just wishful thinking
Don’t be afraid to inject a healthy dose of performance art as appropriate
Show your passion about the venture

Where most of these elements were missing in elevator pitches, it was quite obvious. And these pitches would not make me open my wallet, should I be an angel investor or investment banker. And you need to be pretty much well-rounded in the above mentioned elements, otherwise even a worthy idea could go unappreciated.

These ideas resonate quite well with what our professor told us later in class: Investors would rather invest in passionate person with average idea, than in brilliant idea with average person. Or, paraphrased, investors give money to people, not to ideas.

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On the first day of classes our professor in Entrepreneurship prompted us to form study teams to work on a few group assignments throughout the course. Namely, we were expected to work in groups on the Executive Summary and Elevator Pitch for some business start up. I joined a group of classmates I knew from my previous classes, but we have not worked together on group projects before. After the first class we convened for a few minutes to discuss our course of actions, select the business idea to develop into the Summary and the Pitch.

Turned out, one of my team mates was involved in helping an actual start up with their business plan and funding solicitation. He shared a general idea of the start up and the service they were going to provide. He offered to use the executive summary of the start up he had been working with for our group assignment. He also volunteered to present this in the form of an Elevator Pitch, which was sort of natural, given his close involvment with that start up.

We all thought it was a good idea, especially because it was a real thing, not just something we would make up in our minds just for the sake of presenting in class. So we agreed to take that start up for our group assignments. Of course, we all pledged to pitch in to the project on “as needed” basis.

In the following weeks, overwhelmed with other assignments and for various other reason, we just let it slip. We were talking in general terms about it on our breaks during the class, but that was it. I actually did not even get the Executive Summary of our start up in writing untill the night before the class when it was due, along with the Elevator Pitch presentation.

I volunteered to type out and format the Executive Summary into the form suitable for presentation. And this is where the exciting part began. I only got to reading the Summary for the first time around noon on the day of presentation/submission it in class. To tell you the truth, when I first heard the idea of the start up, I had some reservations about the nature of the service and viability of the business model. But it seemed like an easy way to deal with the assignment, and I thought I could go along with it.

When I actually read the Summary while working on formatting it, I realized that I personally would not be able to sign my name under that business. I formatted it to give to the group, as I promised. But I had to do something else in the remaining 4-5 hours to present for myself, as missing the points in the course because of non-submitted assignment was not an option.

That was a gruelling exercise. I had to come up with a business idea and turn it into something credible in this extremely short time. Mind you, other groups had spent at least a couple of weeks working on that assignment. For the first two hours I was just relentlessly brainstorming, all by myself, all possibilities which could at least remotely pass for a credible business start up. At times my brain was freezing because of the time pressure.

Eventually I came up with a business idea which was connected to something I had been thinking about in general terms and had done some preliminary online research in the last week or so. The business start up idea was based on the premises of scarce resources available for entrepreneurial training at elementary and middle school level. Once I figured that out, I put together an Executive Summary in the remaining time. At that moment I could not even think about the Elevator pitch part of the assignment. I was just happy to have something on paper to turn in at class.

Now was the time to break the news about my “defection” to the group. I sent them an email with explanation that I could not support and undersign the original business idea. I attached both Executive Summaries, for the original business and for the one I had cooked in the previous few hours. I offered my business idea as our group paper, if they agreed, and said that I would have to go solo if they stuck on the original one. That way the group would not suffer from my withdrawl, and I would have to deal with the rest on my own.

Continued: Elevator Pitch-Empowering MBA Experince.

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