The Founder Institute is offering a scholarship for the Los Angeles Spring 2012 semester to the Founder with the best one sentence pitch. Jason Nazar and Jason Calacanis, two strong Mentors from the Los Angeles area, along with Adeo Ressi, have agreed to help pick the winner from among the finalists. Read on for details.
Getting a one sentence pitch right is challenging. As a Founder, you will pitch your business hundreds of times to cofounder prospects, to partners, to team members and to investors. You need to grab the listener's attention quickly, so being able to explain your idea in one sentence is critical. The whole idea for the one sentence pitch came out of a conversation with a top Silicon Valley venture capitalists at the Founder Showcase event. The investors wished that entrepreneurs were more concise in their explanation of the business so that they could make a quick decision on whether to learn more.
Here is a one sentence pitch template that works:
My company, __(insert name of company)__,
is developing __(a defined offering)__
to help __(a defined audience)__
__(solve a problem)__
with __(secret sauce)__.
Let's go through each of the items. The "defined offering" needs to be short, simple and capable of being understood by everyone, like "a website," "a mobile application," "hardware," or "desktop software." The "defined audience" is the initial group of people that you will market your offering to. In the case of consumer applications, it is usually a demographic, such as "women age 25 to 35 years old." In the case of business applications, it is usually a job function at a type of corporation, such as "system administrators at medium sized technology businesses."
Now that you have an offering helping an audience, you need to "solve a problem." The problem needs to be something that everyone understands, such as "reduce the time collecting bill payments" or "engage in an immersive entertainment experience." The final component, the "secret sauce," adds your unique approach to solving the problem and demonstrates a mastery of the market. Some examples are "by sending automated email alerts based on analysis of highest response times" or "with virtual worlds constructed in reaction to the movements of the players."
There are a large number of common mistakes in any length pitch, but particularly in the one sentence pitch. First, try to avoid using adjectives, particularly superlatives. Never say "first," "only," "huge" or "best," as these are trigger words to signal inexperience. Second, don't make your market so large that is can be easily confused for everyone or most of everyone on Earth, such as saying "consumers" or "women." Third, eliminate any buzzwords, acronyms or industry jargon from your pitch. Lastly, keep it short. It's easy to write a long sentence, but the right thing is to be concise.
Below are some tips on the one sentence format from Adeo Ressi.
In order to win the Founder Institute scholarship to the Los Angeles Spring 2012 semester worth $900, you need to post your one sentence pitch below in the comments by Sunday, October 7th, at 9:00 PM, and you need to fill out an application at http://FI.co/join/jj. We will be reviewing and providing feedback on your pitches in the comments as they come in, and pitches with the most likes will get feedback first. The winner will be announced in separate post on Monday, October 8th. Please be sure to follow the format to quality. Good luck!
