Your elevator pitch is the most important part of your startup pitch and pitch deck. The success of your elevator pitch determines if an investor will potentially invest in your startup. Full stop.
If you have a good elevator pitch, the investment process will continue. If you have a bad elevator pitch, the investor will likely not invest.
Let’s start with a story about what your elevator pitch is and why your elevator pitch is the most important part of your pitch deck. I pitched a well-known Silicon Valley venture capitalist when I was raising the initial funding for my company. I thought the meeting went well. The investor seemed engaged and interested in what I was saying.
Then at the end of the meeting, the investor said, “You didn’t have me at Hello.” In other words, the investor was saying, my elevator pitch, which is the first two or three minutes of a pitch, didn’t make him want to invest in our business.
I immediately knew he wasn’t going to invest. It didn’t matter that the rest of the meeting went well. The elevator pitch didn’t grab him, so he wasn’t going to invest. It was that simple.
Right or wrong, most startup investors, in my experience, make investment decisions in a two step sequence. The first step is always emotional. They will ask themselves…
