How to craft a great pitch without spending much time on it | Hacker News Reader

How to craft a great pitch without spending much time on it

hardba.co

39 pointsbrault8 comments

>In the minds of many of those who didn’t know me that night I became “The guy who wanted to invest $1000 in the stock market when he was 18”, which is an easier label to remember than “The guy who wants to democratize the financial system”

I think your self-diagnoses is not quite right. The wrong conclusion is to think "$1000 at 18" is more memorable because it's a biographical detail. The bigger issue is that "democratize the financial system" was too abstract and vague.[1] A clear and concise description of your product is still better than a founder's biography. You just happen to pick a nebulous product description and that distorted the weighting towards your personal story.

To me, the landing page of http://hardbacon.ca was more effective than your live pitch to describe the product. (The youtube video didn't show your slides so maybe the live audience received your messaging better.)

From that page, I would substitute "democratize financial system" with something like:

- "We're like LendingTree for small investors. Instead of presenting a list of banks offering loans, we present a list of brokers including human brokers and automatic robot brokers."

- "We're like Expedia/Orbitz/Hipmunk for choosing an investment broker. We let non-professional investors compare brokers and advisers."

[1] "democratize the financial system" is so generalized that it could apply to PayPal, Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, Square, Stripe, Kickstarter, Bitcoin, etc.

I also feel like people only remember what they want to remember. For instance if I'm at a bar and an attractive person tells me their name I am much more likely to remember it then the bartender who I also had a casual conversation with, however vain that might sound. I've heard a few dozen pitches and I still remember many who gave them by what their company is doing rather then who they are... YMMV as always.

Serious question, although a bit off-topic: why is the number of Facebook/Instagram/... followers even relevant? What is the average conversion on channels like these, and aren't there more efficient channels to focus on in the beginning? F.e. go to a student event and hand out flyers there, chat with people etc?

Agree. If you have a conversation ratio for a channel then optimizing how you acquire followers makes sense. Otherwise go ask people to pay you money and hear what they have to say

I can't tell what the site is about from clicking on it. Additionally, it appears the author is giving advice, but didn't win the competition? Winning isn't necessarily a requirement, but it would have helped validate the article as the title, "How to Craft a Great Pitch" seems to imply a way we know the advice is solid.

Finally, Instagram likes? SNAPCHAT likes? What?

This post comes across (IMO) as a thinly-veiled attempt to get us to learn about this guy's startup. The advice (sound natural, be memorable) is not unique, and the strategy seems bizarre (why Excel?) and apparently didn't win him the competition.

Of course, an alternate explanation for his loss could be that his problem statement ("I was 18 and couldn't invest $1k in the stock market") isn't a problem anymore. Hell, I had an Ameritrade account decades ago and invested roughly this much money.

If correct, the comment from jasode is much clearer at explaining the point of the site than the landing page. I got it that they were comparing brokers, but its not clear that this is the point of the site.

Great topic. I have had this problem may times over.

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