Often, you only have 30 seconds to grab the attention of a prospective customer or investor. Having a strong elevator pitch – one aligned among all the members of your team – is critical toward helping investors, customers, prospects, and employees understand what you do.
This workshop will include a discussion of the elements necessary for a perfect elevator pitch, as well as pitch practice with your peers for real-time feedback.
Please do the following homework before the workshop:
1 – Draft your pitch!
According to Y Combinator, your elevator pitch should be easily digestible, “… like baby food.” In other words, it should be clear, succinct, and get right to the heart of what you do and why it matters.
- It may be helpful to use Techstars’ elevator pitch template:
“For {customers} that have {problem x}, we {what you do!}”
While it’s not necessary to stick to this exact template, try to stay close to the key terms:
- What is the problem?
- Who are the customers?
- What do you do to solve that problem?
2 – Watch this Techstars video for more detailed info on this template.
3 – Bring your pitch to the workshop!
Speaker Name: Phil Green, Harvard Innovation Labs B2B Advisor
As Associate Director, Venture Programs, Phil ‘s mentoring is focused on B2B, as well as teams where engineering/product development choices are critical to the venture.
Phil brings 30 years of experience in building products, services, teams, and companies. As a former CTO, he has built web-based enterprise applications, as well as consumer mobile apps for IOS and Android. As a former CEO, he built a customer base of 5,000 organizations, in 50 countries, serving over 1 million users. This B2B venture used a direct sales channel to penetrate F1000 accounts such as Bank of America, NASA, Owens Corning, Pfizer, Kraft Foods and used an indirect partner channel to penetrate international markets as well as small or midsize US businesses. As a COO, he has improved operations, profitability, and led the company’s push to establish an inbound marketing strategy focused on generating B2B leads. Phil has experience in conversational AI, search, database systems, agile development, no code product development solutions such as Bubble & Glide, and has worked at venture-backed start-ups, self-funded start-ups, and publicly traded companies. Phil can also advise on how to approach Angels, and he is a Boston Techstars alumnus. Phil holds an MBA from HBS and graduated from Harvard College with an AB in Economics.
This session is for team members participating in the i-lab’s Venture Program. Registration is available via the i-lab portal (click below) or through the program calendar. If you are a Harvard affiliate who would like to join this session or if you don’t have access to the i-lab portal, please email i-lab@harvard.edu.
Register here: https://my.innovationlabs.harvard.edu
