I recently was on a judging panel where we heard nine 3-minute pitches.
While I had distinct notes for each founder, there was a lot of commonality.
From this, I have designed a self-assessment pitch rating scheme and instruction manual. You may retake the test after making improvements to get a better score.
Question 1: What is the most impressive thing your startup has done?
If there is a clear slide explaining this in the first 25 seconds of your talk, give yourself a point and go on to the next question. If not, give yourself a zero until you fix it.
Question 2: What have you done with customers?
If you LOIs, active users, a waiting list, or at least 100 customer interviews and you have a slide describing it in the first 60 seconds, give yourself a point and go on to the next question. If not, give yourself a zero until you fix it.
Question 3: For whom are you a better choice than the alternatives?
Take a full ten minutes running a web search to find out what the best-known alternatives are. If you have a slide that makes it clear why domr would be better off with your offering for whom, give yourself a point and go on to the next question. If not, give yourself a zero until you fix it.
Question 4: What is the size and nature of your initial market (SOM)?
If you have a slide that has a dollar value and clear targetable identification of who these users are, and it is not “a small undifferentiated percentage of a big number” give yourself a point and go on to the next question. If not, give yourself a zero until you fix it.
Question 5: What makes your team especially qualified to do this?
If you have a slide with names, clear pictures, and a couple of bullets of the qualification of each team member, and that slide doesn’t include your advisors, and you don’t talk about “combined years of experience,” give yourself a point and go on to the next question. If not, give yourself a zero until you fix it.
Question 6: What should the audience do?
If you have a really clear ask (eg: money and what you will accomplish with it, introductions to early adopters, advisors with particular skills, bing an early adopter etc.), along with your contact information (yourname@yourwebsite, not “hello” at, not a generic email domain; along with your phone number), give yourself a point and go on to to the next question. If not, give yourself a zero until you fix it.
Scoring
A four is passing, but fix it until you get a six. If you have a three or less, you are probably needless wasting everyone’s time.
Why be a hero when you be a zero?
The median score for presenters I have seen this month is zero. Just like last month. And the month before.
