Principles of pitching

I've been amazed at how many pitches I've seen that were missing the 'next steps' aka "the point of this."

One of the things that has always helped me is realizing that people listening to something I'm pitching are doing their job. Which is to say this is work for them too, they are here because they think spending 15 minutes or an hour listening to me will have some economic benefit for them down the road. The absolutely best thing I can do for them is to help them work better and more efficiently by helping them extract as clear an understanding as to what I have to offer in the shortest possible time so that as a group we can see which, if any, of the next steps are appropriate.

I realize that sometimes I'm helping them figure out if the topic du jour is just a fad or a real trend (which won't directly help me) but by helping them I leave a good impression and an opportunity to come back.

Nice writeup swombat.

And here I was thinking this would be an article about baseball... Must be the haze of a new baseball season fogging my brain; I should have known better!

I think it needs to be said: swombat.com is quickly becoming the best source for startup analysis/advice. Daniel does a brilliant job aggregating and curating links to startup-related articles; plus I find his long-form pieces to be generally well-written and thoughtful.

Subscribe to the blog, if you haven't already. And @swombat: thank you for taking the time to do this. Swombat.com's quickly becoming one of the few sites I check on a daily basis.