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So they call it an elevator speech. I've heard 58 of these in the last two weeks, in my circuits
in angel investment and business plan contests. What I'm talking about is, lately there's
kind of a fashion of the elevator speech in business plan contests as being timed to 60
seconds. The classic idea is the elevator speech is your spiel when you're suddenly
with a potential investor or buyer or partner, you're in the plane, sitting next to somebody,
or you're literally in the elevator. Lately it's a lot about a 60-second speech about
your business, in front of an audience. So what I recommend, and I've seen a lot of these,
60 seconds is enough time. I want you to think of it in four 15-second portions. And the
first of those is 'Tell a Story.' Give a person a name, and show what problem that person
has. So-and-so has had heart attacks. So-and-so lives in a village where they need clean water.
Humanize it, personalize it. Generate empathy for the problem that this person has. It might
be the patient, the doctor, the hospital, it might be the village, it might be the consumer;
start with that problem. And then, second of four 15-second parts, 'Your Solution.'
Now, because of us, the doctor can see the arteries better, or the village has this filter,
or the family has this filter, or there is this group. What is the solution for the story
you told in the first 15 seconds? And that of course is what you're selling, your business
idea, your product. And then you move to the third 15 seconds, and it's about 'How You're
Different,' and uniquely qualified to be the ones to solve this problem. We have a team
of seasoned, proven entrepreneurs, and our technology is patented, and is new and different
and so on, that's the third thing is how we're different. So you've got the story of the
problem, your solution, how you're different, and you've still got 15 seconds left to talk
about the business. "We see this as an $X billion market where we can take sales up
to this many million dollars with this much money, and we feel that we'll be able to exit
in three to five years by sale to X, Y, and Z." That's your final, ask: what do you want?
You want an investor to be interested? Or you want to get that investor's business card,
or you're in the plane and can get that card to follow up. That last 15 seconds is your
'Ask.' And that, in three minutes, is a one-minute elevator speech.