作者：Elizabeth Yin

编译：张苏月

核心提示：很多创业公司在展示其pitch时总是千篇一律，那么如何在众多公司的pitch中脱颖而出呢？本文给你四点建议。

2 万份pitch的由来

我刚刚完成了500家创业公司两年的市场调研。有一天,同事问我亲眼看过多少家公司的pitch。当我们计算出来时，发现大约是2万份 !

平心而论，这个数字包含了像我前同事 Sean Percival回复的pitch邮件在内。

事实上，我已经看过的绝大多数pitch可能属于这一类，而且只需要花费几秒钟的时间就可阅读和存档，这就是我可以以如此快的速度浏览2万份pitch的原因!

话虽这么说，但是在短短2年内看到这么多pitch也是相当震撼的。下面是我看到一个pitch时所思所想以及我从中学到的东西:

2 万份pitches带给我的四点启示

1、创意不稀奇…重要的是要新颖。

作为一个企业家，你认为你的想法是独一无二的。如果你仍然处在创业教育/旅行的早期阶段，你甚至可能会认为需要保护你的想法，不与任何人进行分享。但即使你已经是一个成功的企业家，你还是觉得你的想法是独一无二的话,或者至少可能只有一两个公司跟你的想法类似,我认为这是因为你在TechCrunch读到这个想法的。

事实证明，每个人都有与你同样的想法。

这不是一件坏事，但这意味着你需要建立自己的思维模式，从而脱颖而出。好消息是,如果你的商业模式实现了业务上的推进,你可以证明你正在执行的是正确的。大多数企业家夸大了他们的想法但低估了这些想法的执行阶段。收入、牵引、建立基础设施等等，都可以让你与众不同,因为我看到绝大多数的企业在种子阶段只有想法没有行动。

2、速度很重要。

不仅是展示你已经做的事很重要,而且你执行这件事的速度也很重要,这是更令人印象深刻的。有些公司在种子阶段停留了5个月，而有些则5年了。所以你不仅要基于某些已经制定的标准到达里程碑,而且要基于自己的步伐适当调整速度。

Mike Cassidy关于创业公司要加快步伐的演讲一直是我最喜欢的。这证明你可以迅速地瞄准目标，不管是获得客户、雇佣或解雇员工，产品研发等。在你的pitch中要传达出这些内容。

3、如果你处在一个非常激烈的竞争环境中，那么重要的是要解决前期的竞争。

如果你处在一个非常激烈的竞争空间：例如环保或饮食等领域，竞争将比你所能想象的更残酷。即使你正在迅速地取得进展。因为在这些领域,投资者看到数以千百计家公司正在做同样的事情，而不是少数几家公司。

因此，想要在这么多家公司中脱颖而出，你需要做到下面两件事:

一是，在你pitch的开篇即展示自己的优势，而不是放到最后。这样就表明你意识到还有其他企业可能有像你一样的想法。也表明你对目前的竞争格局做过思考，尽管知道有竞争存在，但你仍然相信有机会战胜其他公司。

处在竞争激烈的环境中并不是一件坏事——就像谷歌，它是第8个进入市场的搜索引擎公司，但结果证明谷歌处于有利的竞争地位。不过，前提是你需要解决竞争格局。

二是，找准自己在这个竞争格局中的位置。这是真正了解自己不同于其他玩家的地方。

举例说明。

我在上周与一家公司讨论了一个新的招聘平台。他们向我展示了幻灯片，说了一些问题 如“有很多人失业,很多雇主找不到好的人才” 的影响。在线招聘网站已经存在了几十年,甚至在今天仍然极具竞争力!每个人都明白这个问题。

所以,在此次pitch都没有抓住问题的重点。实际上，重点是要指出为什么现有的招聘平台解决方案是无效的，为什么会出现这种情况的细微差别，随后，提出差异化的解决方案,保证没有这些微妙的问题存在。

在某种意义上，如果你处在一个激烈的竞争空间，你的工作是指出,“公司A、B和C的问题都很糟糕，而我这样做的原因就是这个。”如果你能做到这一点，这至少将帮助你在pitch上得到关注。

4、我对推荐和自荐一视同仁。

一开始，我认为别人的推荐信其质量是远高于公司的自荐信的。有时确实如此。但往往不是。这在很大程度上取决于是谁做推荐的。结果往往是“著名”投资者推荐的公司不一定是更好的公司，而且创始人也不一定参照一些伟大的公司,许多创业者都是通过鼓励来帮助他们的朋友。另一方面,有一些人你可能不会听说过有人推荐，但是他们反而是我最值得珍惜的。

所以，最后就有点泛滥了。作为一个企业家，这就是我为什么认为你现在可以写自荐邮件来有效捕捉投资者注意的原因。

5、人们在pitch中如何展现自己让我知道是否应该参加此次会议。

我使用pitch电子邮件作为一个很好的索引来寻找最靠谱/敏锐的创始人。虽然，我不能立即指出谁是靠谱/敏锐的，但我可以指出谁不是。拐弯抹角的邮件副本不是一个好迹象。糟糕的拼写/缺乏标点也不是一个好迹象。语法错误是可以被原谅的,如果你是一个母语非英语的人,但是,如果你是一个母语是英语的人,这就是不可原谅的。使用公司域名而不是Gmail /雅虎/ Hotmail /美国在线的电子邮件地址。否则，你的错误似乎并不那么严重。

尽管以上问题都无需过于强调，但你会吃惊地发现有非常多的pitch出现一些基本操作问题。如果你不善于关注细节,你可以寻求一个擅长的朋友帮助您校对。开篇展示你最佳的一面是非常重要的,因为在你写邮件的时候这是容易被忽略或漏掉的。

一份好的pitch邮件要能抓住要点

尽可能通过要点,而不是段落进行展示。这样更容易阅读。要点展示的是业务核心。下面是一些关于要点的例子:

收入: 现在的MRR是15 k美元，MoM增长了30%

月流失率小于 1%

LTV到目前是是700美元;通过混合支付渠道的CAC是250美元

试点客户包括三星、微软和甲骨文

CEO之前建立的一个营销科技公司卖给了Marketo;CTO之前是一名在Google X工作的软件工程师;他们已经一起合作了2年。

如果你发送一个邮件,请参考该模板。你的邮件目的就是激起收件人的兴趣来参加会议…而不是要获得投资。

在过去的2年，我从事这个工作学到的东西还有很多，但上面这些都是当我看到pitch时所想到的。

英文原文：

I just passed my 2 year mark at 500 Startups.  The other day, my colleague asked me how many company pitches I’ve personally seen.  When we were calculating it out, it came out to about 20k!

To be fair, this number includes pitch emails like this (incl a response from my former colleague Sean Percival).

(In fact, the vast majority of pitches I’ve seen probably fall under this category and these only take a few seconds to read and archive, so this is how you get to see 20k pitches!)

That being said, it’s been quite a ride to see so many pitches in just 2 years.  Here are some learnings and what I immediately think about when I see a pitch:

Ideas are a dime a dozen…AND it’s important to stand out.

As an entrepreneur, you think your idea is unique.  If you’re still in the early stages of your entrepreneur-education/journey, you may even think you need to protect your idea and not share it with anyone.  But even if you’re in the later stages of being an entrepreneur, you still feel like your idea is unique or at least maybe there’s only one or two other companies out there like you, because that’s what you read about in TechCrunch.

It turns out everyone has the same ideas.

This isn’t a bad thing but it means that you need to go in with the mindset of figuring out how to stand out.  The good news is that if you’re making progress on your business, you can show that you’re executing.  Most entrepreneurs overpitch their ideas but underpitch how they’ve been executing.  (revenue / traction / setting up infrastructure / etc) This can set you apart, because the vast majority of businesses I see at the seed stage are just ideas with no action.

Speed matters.

Not only is it important to show what you’ve done but if you’ve been executing on a fast time scale, then that’s even more impressive.  At the seed stage, there are companies who have been around for 5 months and others for 5 years.  So you are not only being benchmarked on hitting milestones but also based upon your pace.

This is one of my favorite startup presentations of all time by Mike Cassidy on going fast.  Demonstrate that you can pull the trigger on things quickly — whether it be getting customers, hiring / firing employees, or product development.  And convey this in your pitch.

3) If you are in a super competitive space, it’s important to address competition upfront

If you are in a super competitive space – areas like cleaning or food delivery, for example – it’s going to be harder for you than you can ever imagine.  Even if you are making progress quickly.  In these areas, investors are not just seeing a handful of companies doing the same thing but hundreds or thousands.

To give yourself the best shot at getting noticed, you need to do 2 things:

A) Demonstrate immediately — not at the end of your pitch— that you are self-aware that there are other businesses like yours. This shows that you have thought about the competitive landscape and despite knowing that it’s competitive, you believe there is an opportunity for you to outcompete all other companies.

Being in a competitive space isn’t a bad thing — Google was like the 8th search engine to enter the scene and they turned out ok.  But you need to address the landscape.

B) Address where you fit into this landscape. This is about really understanding how you are different from the other players out there.

For example: I was talking last week with a company that is a new type of job board.  They showed me their problem slide which said something to the effect of “There are so many people who are unemployed and so many employers who cannot find good talent…blah blah blah”.  Online job boards have been around for a couple of decades and even today is an incredibly competitive space!  Everyone understands this problem.  So, this is not the correct problem to outline in this pitch.  The right problem is to tell me why existing job board solutions suck / are ineffective / etc and be super insightful into the nuances of why this is the case. And then after that, present a differentiated solution that doesn’t have these same nuanced issues.  In some sense, if you are in a crowded space, your job is to say, “The problem is that Companies A, B, and C suck, and here’s why.”

If you can do this, this will help you at least get attention on your pitch.

I treat referrals and cold-emails the same (for the most part)

In the beginning, I thought referrals from others would be much higher quality than companies emailing in cold.  Sometimes this is true. But often it’s not.  It depends a lot on who is doing the referrals. It would turn out that “famous” investors referring companies don’t necessarily refer better companies. And founders don’t necessarily refer great companies either – lot of founders are doing favors for their friends by putting in a good word. And on the flip side, there are some people whom you wouldn’t have heard of whose referrals I value the most.

So, in the end, it’s a bit of a wash, and this is why I think you, as an entrepreneur, can now write cold emails effectively to capture the attention of investors.

4) How people present themselves in pitch emails tell me if I should NOT take a meeting

I use pitch emails as a good proxy for finding the most on-point / sharp founders.  Rather, I can’t tell immediately who is on-point / sharp, but I can tell who is not.  Meandering email copy is not a good sign.  Bad spelling / lack of punctuation = also not a good sign.  Bad grammar is excusable if you are a non-native English speaker, but if you are a native English speaker, that’s inexcusable.  Use a company domain name as opposed to a Gmail / Yahoo / Hotmail / AOL email address.  Otherwise, your business doesn’t seem serious enough yet.

These all seem obvious and not worth addressing, but you’d be surprised just how many pitches have basic issues.  If you are not good at paying attention to detail, ask a friend who is good at that to help you proofread.  Getting in the door with your best foot forward is so important, because it’s easy for your email to get ignored or lost.

Use bullet points when possible rather than paragraphs.  They are easier to read.  Bullet out the key awesome things about your business.  Here are some example bullets:

Revenue: now at $15k MRR, growing 30% MoM

Monthly churn is < 1%

LTV to date is $700; CAC via blended paid channels is $250

Pilot customers include Samsung, MSFT, and Oracle

CEO previously founded a marketing tech company and sold it to Marketo; CTO previously worked as a software engineer at Google X; have worked together for 2 years

If you are sending a deck, refer to this.  Your email is just to pique interest to get a meeting…not to get an investment.

There are a ton of other learnings from having done this job for the last 2 years, but these are the things that come to mind when I see pitches.