Entrepreneurship: The Art of the Pitch On October 16th, I participated a workshop called The Art of the Pitch. The workshop can pretty much divided into two parts. First is we listen to Craig Terrill’s speech on how to raise money by giving a pitch. Second Part we, the audience, had to form our own groups. Each group will have one product that was invented by real person. Our goal was to give a pitch and raise money for our assigned product. When we finished our pitch, there were judges giving us their thoughts and feedbacks. The presentation by Mr. Terrill was straight forward and easy to understand. First he pointed out that we need to know our audience or the potential investors. He divided these “audience” into two groups, the angel investor and the professional investor. I think “knowing your audience” is the most of important part when preparing your speech. Mr. Terrill gave us some tips on dealing with these two types of investors. For an angel investor, personal connection is the key. Angel investors have interested in people more than products they provide. In another hand, professional investors are looking for result. In the presentation, he used hockey stick as example. It means that professional investors want to hear things like return change in numbers. It is important to deliver the right message to the right person. After knowing the importance of giving right speech to right people, Mr. Terrill gave us tips on timing a pitch. There are three ways to time your pitch, the elevator, the coffee shop, and the conference room pitch. My thought on giving a pitch for a new product should always be at least one hour, but Mr. Terrill does not think that way. The pitch timing methods are all ten minutes or less. He said that for these investors, they may earn a lot of money, but not time. Next, he taught us what to talk during the pitch such as telling a story about your target customer of your product, what problem does your target customer that your product will solve? How did you come to understand this problem and potential solution, what is your story? What does your target customer hope will happen to make their life better? Lastly, he concluded this topic by pointing out five things to convey, customer problem and why, value proposition, how the product works, market potential, and why you will be successful. In addition, he gave us some of his “sneaky tips.” Personally, I think this is the most interesting and valuable part of his presentation. He pointed out that giving a pitch to a person is always better to a group of people. The reason is simple, more people more problems. Let’s say you are giving a pitch to ten people. If ten of them has one question each, you will end up having ten questions about
