It amazes me watching pitch nights how many entrepreneurs and founders have trouble with some very simple things.
A lot of them give no call to action. They are asked to speak in front of a room of 100 people and they don’t have a way for me to signup for your service. If your service is not out, how do I follow you on Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest, or whatever the hell it is? Even better than that, is there an email list I can join so you’ll reach out when the product is ready. If you sell a physical product. Where the fuck is it. I go to a speech about a fashion product, and the founder was not wearing the product, and did not bring the product along. This was for a group of 30-40 people. If you got product. Bring the damn product. Even better, have a trunk full of the product out in the trunk of your car you can sell to me after the talk. Daymond John sold hats out front of the New York Collesium for $10, get your head out of your ass and hustle.
They don’t have a five minute pitch and can’t speak about their business. If you have been working on a thing for 2 years, then if I hand you a microphone, you should be able to get up and just pitch it in some coherent fashion.
Follow the fuck up. Send a damn email. I am a developer, you say you need code done and can’t proceed until you have more code. And when I talk to you and hand you my card, you never call me. I wanted to build your startup for fucking free but nope, you don’t care. I offered through a Tech group I was part of $15,000 to $30,000 worth of services to a nonprofit that had a list of needs it advertised at the end of its presentation. I said we could handle every one of those needs. No call. This group was having a profound impact on people in the community. They were passionate people really changing lives, but they were not business managers, didn’t understand accounting, financial stuff, web design, social media. We offered to take care of all that so they could scale and help more people. But nope they just never called.
Have some damn energy about you product/business. If you don’t want to be up in front of 100 random strangers pitching your shit in the early stage. Get the fuck out. 100 people came to hear about your damn unicorn. Fucking tell us all about its magic powers and it’s horn of bloody death. Hell if you’re bored about your thing, then we will probably be too.
If you are pitching your business, you are selling. Either to investors, potential partners, or customers. So sell.