How to Create a Business Pitch for Your Idea

If you are thinking about presenting your new idea or project to potential investors in English and you are not familiar with it or you need to sell a new concept to someone and do not feel comfortable doing it in English, look at some guidelines below which I hope will help you:

First, let’s get a clear idea about what we mean when we say “pitch”, since this is something you need to be super sharp and potential investors will be expecting from you. A pitch is a concise presentation of an idea from someone to an investor or group in order to provide you with the needed resources to execute your venture. This pitch can by by email, verbal or in presentation form.

1. The problem: It all starts with a problem you are trying to solve that no one else has solved yet or not as efficiently as you believe you can. This needs to be backed by market statistics and trends to prove your point. For example:

Problem: “It’s very hard to connect professionals of the same fields to exchange experiences and explore opportunities”. 

Solution: “Linkedin”

2. The Solution: What is your vision regarding how this problem can be fixed at general scale and how you will specifically do it. Ideally here you would show a demo of your product or service. For example:

Solution: “We are going to create a social network where professionals can connect, chat and share ideas”.

3. Your Target Market: To whom are you are going to offer your product or service? What is their profile? What is their economic and cultural status? In which areas do they live and how you are going to reach them? It’s very different to create a solution for a Millennial than for a Generation X person. Their problems are different and it’s important to identify who is your core target. For example:

“The new Social Media Tik Tok is targeting from 14 to 25-year-old young students who can spread their values.” 

4. Milestones and Steps: What are the clear steps and milestones for you to achieve and that is the deadline in order to put your idea in practise? What team you are going to use in order to make that happen?

“We are going to be launching an MVP (Minimum viable product) of our new service in 6 months, which will be a Beta version of our final version. Then, we will need 4 more months to acquire our first clients and validate our hypothesis. From here we will prepare our final market deploy with strong communication.”

“Our goal is to reach 1 million clients within the first 12 months.”

5. Financials: This will cover a full range of very important subjects. First, what is your business model? In other words, how you are planning to make money out of this idea? (Subscription business, taking a commission from selling, applying consulting fees, etc.). Second, what is your expected business plan for the next 3 years? 

And finally, the most important question to answer is: What exactly do you need from the investor in order to make that business plan happen? Here we are mostly talking about funds. But we could also ask for additional support such as contacts, advice or mentoring. 

1. Facebook (2004)

2. Airbnb (2011)

3. Linkedin (2004)

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