Pitching Your Idea

I spent today watching college entrepreneurs give elevator pitches to potential investors. After watching business ideas all day, I have a few observations:

  1. Funding is not a rare commodity, but validated, vetted business ideas are.
  2. It’s vitally important to know the pain you’re solving for your customers. If you can talk to them, do it. If you feel the pain, make sure you’re not the only one.
  3. Scale, and your ability to multiply a business model to scale, matter a lot.
  4. Huge dreams are okay, but only if you can prove you have the ability to execute on them. How do you prove this? Partner with credible people who bring high-level skills to your team. If your idea is stupid, but you’ve been able to talk five PhD-level experts into leaving their jobs to join your team, I will take a hard look at it.

The talented student entrepreneurs I saw today encouraged me about the future, and reminded me that taking public steps toward your dreams is a great way to get closer to success.

What are some of the best and worst pitches you’ve seen?

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.