Elevator Pitch

The concept of the Elevator Pitch is borne from the idea that if you met an investor on an elevator and only had 30 seconds to pitch your business, what would it sound like? In fact 30 seconds is about as much attention as you are going to get from an investor to begin with, so thinking in that time frame makes a lot of sense.

The formula for the perfect Elevator Pitch involves three ingredients - the Problem, the Solution, and the Market Size.

The Problem
Every great company starts by solving an important problem. The more accurately you articulate the Problem, the more valuable the Solution will be.

Think about how NetFlix.com solved the problem of having to go to the video store in order to rent a movie. No one enjoyed having to travel back and forth to the video store for a rental, nor did they appreciate paying late fees (which we all have done, and hate!)

NetFlix solved the problem of never having to visit a video store to rent a movie and never having to pay late fees again. It was a real problem that everyone could identify with (much to the chagrin of Blockbuster!)

The Elevator Pitch has three main ingredients: The Problem, The Solution and The Market Size.
With only the Problem in hand, our Elevator Pitch would start like this:

"Going to the video store is a pain. People don 't like traveling back and forth just to rent a movie and they hate paying late fees even more."

What 's important about this explanation of the Problem is that everyone can relate to the problem. The more relate-able the problem, the more likely you are to get someone 's attention to it. Think about ways to modify your “Problem” so that anyone you meet could easily understand it. It’s more important that the problem is relate-able than complicated.

Now let 's find a solution.

The Solution
Once you 've articulated the Problem your next step is to think about how your Solution fixes that Problem beautifully.

Sticking with our NetFlix example, here’s how