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Comment by CalChris | Hacker News Reader

The elevator pitch is fundamentally a pitch. And a one sentence summary is fundamentally a summary. They're fundamentally different.

I was sailing with a buddy (a made man in SV) and he asked me what I was working on. I blurted out a one sentence summary and did it ever hit. I hadn't even thought of running through an elevator pitch because I was racing and was really thinking about sail trim. But I remember the summary and I'll use it. I may even lead the pitch with it.

BTW the worst single sentence summaries are the Hollywood summaries: this is Airbnb for Ubuntu distributions. That sort of summary says that you haven't really thought it out. It's a trope and their eyes just glaze over immediately.

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The word "Mercedes" in Kalanick's summary is a highly loaded word with a lot of prior meaning attached to it.

Similarly, I think, when people say "Airbnb for something", they're using shorthand for something with a lot of prior meaning attached to it.

My point: we're being too harsh on those who use "Uber for this" or "Airbnb for that"... they're using shorthand the way Kalanick used "Mercedes".

On the one hand, you're right about using a brand name as shorthand for what that represents.

But you're missing a point that's true of the startup metaphor but not of the mercedes one: "uber for x" has been absolutely beaten to death as a low-effort startup pitch, to the point of being a useful counter-signal. Mercedes has no such baggage when it comes to judging the people saying the word.

New pitch: Mercedes AMG. We don't just want Mercedes, we want the AMG level :)

> they're using shorthand the way Kalanick used "Mercedes"

I disagree. Using "Mercedes" instead of "taxi" changes the framing (using "taxi" would have evoked "oh, it's a taxi app; thse already exist"); describing something as "Uber for X" does not change the framing (aside from the known fact that it has become a tiring cliche).

I agree.

Ultimately, writing that one sentence with unmph is harder than it looks. Sometimes "Uber for__" is concise and conveys lots of meaning, sometimes it's vague and meaningless.

I think the biggest trap in the "A for B" formula is trying to ride on the prestige of B. That's why there are so many "Apple of X." What they're trying to convey is "awesome, stylish & successful" or somesuch. It's like calling yourself "Michael Jordan of __". You're just being obtuse in telling me that you're awesome.

"Uber for tripsitters" OTOH conveys actual meaning. Press a button, a freelance tripsitter will arrive.

I had to google tripsitter.

Then you're probably not in the target market. :)

For better or worse, some people really want to hear your "We're the X for Y". My startup [1] isn't the X for any Y (the closest thing I've found is "we're the Dolby for reading" — but this is not a close fit and makes people think too hard), but I've heard from many mentors/investors that I should try hard to come up with an "X for Y" comparison because they and their colleagues like to hear them.

I agree with you that these summaries are sometimes quite awful, but in some cases they are quite apt. The conclusion I've come to is that if a very good analogy exists, you should use it. But the bar for "very good" should be quite high, since a bad "X for Y" will do more harm than good. You end up in meta-conversations about the analogy itself, which isn't helpful.

1: http://www.BeeLineReader.com

With a summary, you're trying to get a value proposition across succinctly. And I (as in this is my opinion) don't think you can do that with X for Y.

  You push a button and in five minutes a Mercedes
  picks you up and takes you where you want to go.

I know exactly what that means. I immediately see the value in it.

As you say but this is not a close fit and makes people think too hard. That means they can't immediately see the value in it. That means you have to keep working on it. Bailey didn't say this was gonna be easy.

BTW, the Kalanick summary personalizes brilliantly and name checking Mercedes sure doesn't hurt. The later Uber summary (“Tap a button, get a ride.”) does nothing for me. I only vaguely know what it even means because I already know it's about Uber. It could be talking about an FPS for all I know. Still, it is better than an iPhone app for taxis.

But the bar for "very good" should be quite high. That's an awesome line.

Maybe someone from YC wants to chime in, but I noticed a pattern the other day when looking at their product descriptions.

http://yclist.com/

Look at the difference in F1 going forward...

To help people position your product in their heads effectively, points of parity (e.g. analogies) and points of difference are very useful.

The 'X for Y' is a way to express both at once "it's like X but it's different because it focuses on Y". However, as you say, it only works well in limited situations and can come off as very cliché.

During customer development, I recommend leading with the input / output description and then letting the recipient clarify using their own 'point of parity'.

and that shows exactly my problem with the one sentence analogies: "we're the Dolby for reading".

The first thing I know about Dolby is the noise suppression technology for tapes. So you are noise suppression for reading ? Well, that didn't work.

Next thing I'm thinking of is Dolby surround. But I can't think about how surround sound should work with reading.

I look at your webpage and now I know your product. But "we're the Dolby for reading" didn't help me at all in understanding your product.

Most of the time on hackernews when I'm reading "We're the X for Y" I have to google X first to understand what they're trying to say with this sentence.

You're right — this is a terrible analogy from a customer perspective. I only ever use it if pressed by a VC who wants to know how our business model will work. There aren't many tech (non-biotech) that get most of their revenue from licensing, so Dolby it is. But the analogy only "works" in the context of a discussion about business models.

I think you're on the money, there isn't a good "A for B" analogy.

That said, I like formulas for this sort of thing, whther they yield the final solution or not. Uber's sentence from the article could be an alternative:

"You push a button and in five minutes a Mercedes picks you up and takes you where you want to go."

"You push a button and you can read 26.4% faster."

That still feels a little vague and evasive, I think.

"You push a button and your book is re-formatted and coloured so that you can read faster."

If you have to have an anology, you could try. "A yad for ebooks."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yad

I don't think the formula makes sense with "A" you have to include the Wikipedia link to. The point of "the uber for y" or "the apple of x" is that it plays off of our deep seated awareness of uber and Apple. Do I want to be a yad? I don't know.

I agree. A pitch and a summary are different. Part of the art of the one-sentence description is knowing your audience.

For instance, I operate a directory of technology for teachers. One of the services I provide is a newsletter and blog [1] where I summarize technologies (e.g. websites, mobile apps, desktop apps, electronics products) in one-sentence descriptions.

The way I've written those one-sentence descriptions has evolved over time. The format that has resonated the most with my audience is stating the technology's primary purpose, which sometimes can imply it's benefit. Since I know my audience is teachers, the context of the purpose and benefit is already assumed and baked into the description.

I would never use a "This is X for Y" description, for example, not because I dislike it (which I don't), but because it wouldn't be informative for my audience.

However, I think a "This is X for Y" description can be entirely appropriate for an audience of startup investors. This is why YC coaches their startups to use such a sentence framework.

[1] https://edshelf.tumblr.com/

I think because of the velocity of YC, and I believe they've even said as much, that YC doesn't care about ideas. They care about people and markets. It's basically their investment thesis. So for their purposes, positioning is much much more important than differentiation. They want people they can recombine and reposition.

There are however other kinds investors and other kinds of entrepreneurs where that just doesn't make sense.

>BTW the worst single sentence summaries are the Hollywood summaries: this is Airbnb for Ubuntu distributions. That sort of summary says that you haven't really thought it out. It's a trope and their eyes just glaze over immediately.

Wrong. The words "airbnb for cooking - or more specifically restaurants. shared meals at people's homes" are worth $12 million if uttered by the right person. (Which isn't me.)

"X for Y" is properly thought of as jargon, not marketing. It's useful, just not as the only component of a pitch. It definitely shouldn't be considered a summary.

Because "this is X for Y" is technically one sentence but it needs a lot of work to decode. If you can deliver just a sentence, it should also be just a sentence of thought to parse. Instead we need to think about what is X, what is Y, substitute the variables, and now we're juggling a paragraph of incoherent thought. Whereas a "Do this, and that happens" doesn't need any of that.

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