How to Craft a WINNING Startup Pitch in 2024 with Kris Childress

Kris: [00:00:00] Maybe you're having trouble raising funding because you don't know how to tell your story. I always say that the way I look at it as a pitch is to persuade someone, to convince someone to, to see something differently or to do something. Most of us are not naturally that way. In fact, I'm not naturally that way.

Kris: To the extent I'm doing it better now, it's because a lot of practice and training to get to that point. I always say that, uh, We think the deck is the pitch, but actually we're the pitch. It's much easier as once you're relaxed about pitching, it comes across very, very authentic, very relaxed. Almost always.

Rahul: Hey Chris, uh, thank you so much for joining me today.

Kris: No worries, my pleasure, glad to be here.

Rahul: Yeah, so, um, you know, when, while I was building my startups, I used to spend considerable time, thinking about what is a pitch and, uh, how to create a compelling pitch, but then what I've.

Rahul: realizes that, back then I never [00:01:00] spent any time sort of, uh, understanding why, what is the purpose of the pitch? So to be honest, I attended one of your, sessions on what makes a great pitch. and that's when I realized that, yeah, I didn't really think about why a great pitch. So is this something that you see often with the startups?

Rahul: Yes.

Kris: Yeah, it's almost kind of a, um kind of funny. A lot of times I'll often start up and I did that and when I start teaching pitching, I'll just say, so what is a pitch? And you just get all these blank looks and then you'll get back and I'll say, there's no right or wrong answer. Just tell me what you think.

Kris: And it's like, all I want to give information or I want to get people excited or I want to get money or whatever it is that they're doing. And none of those are wrong. But I'd say at the end, I always say that the way I look at it as a pitch is to persuade someone. To convince someone to, to see something differently or to do something.

Kris: I like the way, um, Guy Kawasaki says it's [00:02:00] to get alignment. And so the purpose of a pitch is to really get someone to align with what you're trying to do. And it should be honest and clear and, and up front. You know, not, not a manipulative thing, but that's really the purpose of a pitch.

Kris: so then why do you think startups don't often think about, oh, the why? I

Kris: think we're too busy thinking about the how. How am I going to do this? Which a lot of things are how do I file a form? How do I get this invention to work? How do I build a marketing plan? It's a lot of how. And then when we get into the pitch, we really get back into the why.

Kris: And I think sometimes too, it's because we're, we haven't thought with the end in mind. So a lot of times I'm going to pitch and I'll say, so what do you want to have happen as a result of this pitch? And sometimes it's like, duh, I want to get an investment or I want to get a sale. Or even now people are using pitches for things like,getting key employees or getting partnerships.

Kris: And they always have, well, that's what I want to get. And I'd say, but, What is really the outcome of [00:03:00] this particular pitch? And it may be a lot of times I say they're too broadly, I call it two types of pitches. One is an in game pitch, which means that when I make this pitch, when I talk to this person, I really have a very specific thing I want them to do.

Kris: I want them to invest. Um, I want them to buy my product. And this is a final thing. But a lot of our pitches are really not like that. A lot of our pitches are really to get us to the next stage. And what I'm trying to pitch is for someone just to maybe make an introduction, or maybe to see things my way, or maybe to be supportive in their company of what I'm doing.

Kris: So I always have to think really, what is the outcome I expect and not try to load too much into the pitch. Because if every pitch is an in game pitch where I'm expecting someone to do something, I get very stressed. And I have a lot of, You know, I've got to really dump a lot of stuff in. I've got to cover all these points.

Kris: But no, really think about what is it you want to do and what kind of information and what kind of persuasion do you want to include just, just to get to the next step.

Rahul: Yeah, this is for sure [00:04:00] something that I've made because As a first time founder, you don't really understand what is the outcome that you want.

Rahul: And you always think it is that investment decision which never gets made in the

Kris: pitch. So I have a joke one time. I used to tell teams, I'd say, you'll do your pitch. I said, no one ever. Gives you a check after a pitch. There's always the first pitch is, you know, there's a series. I heard a, my friend Dennis Bonds, who's an Israeli, give it talk later.

Kris: And he went through like four different kinds of pitches and I cover them somewhat the same way, but you've got an introductory pitch and then you have maybe a follow on pitch with some more important people. Then you may have a final pitch. And again, this is for sales for investment with a key decision makers.

Kris: and I told the guys, I said, you will never get, I'll never get a check after a first pitch. And one guy came up later and he says, you're wrong. I did get a check after a first pitch. I said, well, that's really remarkable. I said, you must've been a really good pitch. He says, yeah, I think it was a pretty good pitch.

Kris: I said, who are you pitching to? Well, he says, pitching for funding. I said, who are you pitching to? He says, pitching to my dad. I said, okay, that's, you know, that's sort of an [00:05:00] outlier. I agree. Maybe if you're, you know, if you have a friendly audience and they're ready to do something That, you know, it might have been a foregone conclusion, but in general, you have to think of pitching as a process.

Kris: I'm going to do a series of pitches, increasingly, typically increasingly more information and more detail and, you know, more Q and a and more interaction until I get to the final. And again, in case of something like I want to get funding or I want to win a competition or I want to get a sale, you know, I have to sort of think about the process that I build up to get that.

Rahul: Yeah. So you mentioned, uh, the purpose is about persuasion, right? Um, what are the elements of what persuades a person to, you know, take notice of?

Kris: Yeah. If I can that perfectly, I would probably be a trillionaire now. Cause I think it's always something, you know, and there's a certain, obviously I think there's a certain art and there's a science.

Kris: And there's a certain chemistry in it, but you can actually make that better. And I know some people that are naturally good at pitching and [00:06:00] we all know those people, they can come in. We used to say they could, you know, they could sell ice to Eskimos. I mean, just always have this great ability to persuade people.

Kris: Most of us are not. Naturally that way. In fact, I'm not naturally that way to the extent I'm doing it better now. It's because a lot of practice and training to get to that point. But in general, when I look at pitching and persuading someone, I really want to think first. What is it that person?

Kris: That audience wants to hear what is it that will convince them and that sometimes takes some working back. So, you know, we used to say in sales, I'd say what keeps them awake at night and if your pitch fits something that's really a struggle in their company, you know, really that they're wrestling with, then it's very often, you know, I found in sales, you'll get a high percentage of sales and a high percentage of persuasion.

Kris: If you're not talking to the right people, you're not presenting something that if that keeps them awake nights. Then it's less likely you're going to be successful in a smaller percentage and in an investment. It's the same way. So [00:07:00] when investment, um, and again, I've heard this from several sources and investment pitches, the first thing I'm trying to do in my persuasion is I don't want to give them any reasons not to invest in me.

Kris: So you, you work for an investment firm. And so I don't know what the ratio is, but the ratio of people saying I want to get money from you guys. To the people that you actually give money to is very high. They may get hundreds or occasionally even talk teams get thousands of people a year coming to them.

Kris: And so you have a filter process where you very quickly want to say, I want to find a reason not to invest. And it's nothing malicious about it. It just means I only have a certain amount of energy and a certain amount of money. And I really got to quickly focus on what's the best possible return, knowing that I'm still going to make.

Kris: Imperfect decisions. I'm still going to invest money sometimes where it's not going to have a return, but I want to have a high hit rate. So you're looking to say first, why don't I want to invest? So first, I think in a sales pitch or any other pitch, make sure that you have what I call hygiene factors.

Kris: Make sure [00:08:00] you don't say something that is, that's going to scare them off. So sometimes I've had teams will say. You know, we have an idea or, you know, we're thinking about this or we looked at this last week and, you know, and that makes an investor kind of nervous because they want to feel there's more substance behind it.

Kris: So the first thing is you want to make sure I'm not doing anything that turns them off immediately that they, you know, they hit the big red button on the desk and say, no, you know, next, next, next. Like the gong show, but the other thing is once you think about those things as much as possible and make sure you don't go over trip wires and you include things to keep them engaged, then think about what is it that, that this person is looking for.

Kris: So, for example, if I'm talking with businesses, the thing you're most commonly looking for, and again, depends on the business would be like, you know, One guy said, I'm looking for things that will save money, make money, make my life easier. And he says, in rare occasions, I'm looking for things that will keep me out of jail.

Kris: That's the extreme case. But I've actually had occasionally situations like that. So [00:09:00] I'll kind of come back to a classic pitching situation where you went from a very difficult pitch to an easy pitch. And this is kind 11. We had this catastrophic, tragedy in the US guys that before had been struggling to sell any kind of airport security equipment, screening tools and things like that.

Kris: Suddenly, the people that they were trying to pitch to were just falling all over themselves. And it really wasn't a matter of am I going to purchase something like what you have? It's really are you the right solution? How quick can you implement? And so the pitches really changed a lot of times to reflect that.

Kris: And they didn't suddenly become brilliant. They suddenly realized they were pitching to A very alerted audience that's very turned on to the idea that they're pitching. And so that's really what you're looking for. so, so first don't do anything wrong. Second, really try to find an audience that's going to be responsive to what you're doing and, and find out what it is that kind of flips their switch and gets them interested.

Kris: And again, I'm not saying this is not possible. Shouldn't [00:10:00] be manipulative. This should be a situation where you really have first and foremost, the idea to help people because the other thing that's kind of weird about pitching by going too long is we tend to want to buy and be persuaded by people that we, we like and feel comfortable with.

Kris: And so one of the things I find it's much easier is once you're relaxed about pitching and it comes across very. Authentic, very relaxed, almost always it's a much better pitch than if you feel like they're really anxious and they're trying to check all the buttons and did I cover that point in that point and do I have the right numbers here?

Kris: And yeah, you want to be, you want to have your details down, but you really want to make sure that you develop kind of a connection with the people that you're pitching to.

Rahul: So, uh, to summarize, I think what you're saying is, you need to have a real understanding of the audience, before you craft your

Kris: pitch.

Kris: And that will get better over time. Yeah. Yeah. So I had someone last week, I was helping him with his pitch and the first pitch was, I mean, it was his first practice, kind of a train wreck. And I said, let's go [00:11:00] through it. And I, we changed it up and I was able to sit in actually and watch the pitch.

Kris: And I think it was a pretty effective pitch. And he came back later. He said a lot of good questions afterwards, a lot of good discussion, people very interested. But I said two things. I said, listen to the questions they ask. it'll clue you in about what they understood, what they didn't understand about what you're doing and what they're interested in.

Kris: And so later we'll. We'll change the pitch and when I watched the pitch and when he told me later the questions I got, I said, yeah, let's next time, let's do the pitch. Let's shift it a little bit and let's focus on that particular point that I didn't see clearly when you actually pitched and maybe they didn't get it either.

Kris: And it was a really a point more about sometimes we say, here's our background and here's our performance. But in this case I said, let's move the performance and the pitch back to the beginning. And get their attention sort of the, I'll call it the Steve Jobs, a thousand songs in your pocket and you get that really strong image and he did it a bit later because he could build up to it because he was Steve Jobs, but our pitches [00:12:00] sometimes if we're new, we want to move that kind of remarkable bit back to the beginning and get people engaged.

Rahul: Yeah.you mentioned your friend from Israel, uh, has this, framework of four types of pitches. What are those?

Kris: Well, I don't want to, I don't want to steal this material. So I'll use my version of them. And I'd say the first one is I call it, and I know you, you may not be a drinker, but I call it a cocktail party pitch.

Kris: And it really is really like someone says, so what do you do? So if I come to you and I say, Rahul, what do you do? How would you answer me?

Rahul: I work in comms at Vertex Ventures.

Kris: Okay. But if you're a startup and you say, I work in comms at Vertex Ventures, okay. That's not particularly interesting. But if you said, you know, I'm involved and I'm, I'm just gonna throw this off the cuff, I'm involved in helping, you know, one of the most.

Kris: You know, important, venture capital firms in Singapore to better communicate, you know, with, and you kind of give more a feeling about what you're doing. And I did, and I've seen that happen a lot of times that we [00:13:00] want to give kind of a functional description of our job and we really need to give more of an A passionate, you know, why am I doing what I'm doing and what's the purpose and where am I?

Kris: And again, that takes time. You want to distill that down to like a sentence or two. So I call that a cocktail party. The next is kind of a networking pitch and this is where someone comes up and maybe they're an investor or they're a potential partner or they're a co founder, potential co founder.

Kris: You're talking with someone where there's a real importance and you know, they're kind of going to be selecting. People have further conversations with then that's a networking pitch and that'll be a bit longer. That might be 30 seconds. And in that point, you start to unpack a little bit of the detail.

Kris: But again, you don't have a slide deck. You know, I've had guys go, Oh, I can't do that. Let me get my slide deck out. No, no, no. You have to be able to do that verbally. And you may have to do like a speed dating situation where you need to do that with 20 or 30. Different people over the course of a few hours in a networking event, so networking pitch.

Kris: The next one is a sort of a [00:14:00] very short three to five minute pitch that you might do for a pitching competition. You might do as kind of an initial round of pitching for funding. And, and that's really, you know, something where you need to, you're probably going to have slides. You may have visuals along with that, and that has to have more detail.

Kris: And again, you have to think about that particular pitch. And someone will talk about maybe the market size or a little bit about a go to market strategy. If it's investment,if I'm talking about, with sales, maybe I give some good references and I talk about people who are already using this product, but I have a little more time to unpack it.

Kris: And then the last one is what I call a full blown investment pitch, and that can be typically 10 minutes, sometimes even longer, 10 to 20 minutes, and it really is like then you're starting to give, you know, you have maybe a very detailed slide deck and a big agenda slide deck, and you have Lots of things to go into and you're going to really get down to like, here's our go to market strategy in detail.

Kris: Here's our competitive landscape and an [00:15:00] investment pitch. if you're, if it's in a sales pitch, you may start to talk about, let's go walk through a couple of our implementations and what the results these companies have gotten. So it's more information and more detail. But again, you think about the first two pitches, they are kind of what I call my primary Progressive pitches.

Kris: I'm trying to get something. The second pitch is also I'm trying to get usually a follow on meeting. The last pitch is often more of what I call an in game pitch where you really have the people coming out of that are going to make a major decision sometimes. Maybe it's again another follow up meeting, but they're going to make a substantial decision.

Kris: That's where like if if and I won't speak for Vertex, but a typical VC, you might have 20 companies come in each give a 10 minute pitch and then you're going to narrow it down to maybe the five. And they're going to give maybe a longer pitch, and they're going to give a lot of Q& A, a lot of discussion, and you do due diligence, and then you're going to come down to maybe the two that you invest in.

Kris: So you have to really be prepared kind of with all of those different layers. But the [00:16:00] first one, obviously, if you don't have a good cocktail pitch, you know, a good network pitch, you may not have a lot of opportunities for the more detailed pitches.

Rahul: So, so in terms of outcomes, maybe you can think about, okay, One outcome of a particular pitch could be progression to a next meeting.

Rahul: And then you also have a different pitch where the outcome has to be a decision.

Kris: Yeah. So I call it an end game. You have kind of a game of progress pitch where I'm a follow on and then there's an end game. And again, you may think it's an end game and it's not, and I've also had what occasionally I'm even, like I said, the other way, like the young guy talked about it was selling to his father, where I think it's just a progress.

Kris: I think it's just an initial, I'm going to do this. And I did that in sales a few times. I went in one time. I remember as a funny story. was in, I was in Minnesota, incredibly cold. The guys I was going to meet actually called and said, Oh no, you cancel it. It's too cold for you to come here. I said, I'm already here.

Kris: I've driven up from Chicago. And it's like 30 below zero and I'm coming. And [00:17:00] what I didn't realize is that the equipment that I was demoing for this process was so cold we had to wait for like an hour and a half for it to warm up enough that it would run, operate properly. And so I'm in there and the guys have brought me coffee.

Kris: He's going back to his office. The thing is really delayed. I mean, I'm most physically sick. How cold it is. Finally comes in. He's the plant manager. I give him, I think is an okay presentation. And he says, Oh, interesting. He says, I'll be back in a minute. Okay. He walks out and I think he's maybe going to get someone else.

Kris: Maybe he wants to bring someone else in the meeting or he brings another sample for me to look at. Comes back, hands me a purchase order. I'm like, what is this? It's a purchase order. We look at it. We need this. So occasionally they surprise you. You think it's maybe you always have to be prepared that maybe you think it's a progress pitch.

Kris: It's an initial pitch, but it actually turns out to be a final. So you always have to be kind of ready to step up and accept that. But in general, you're going to find they're going to progress this way.

Rahul: Yeah, interesting. So, um, now let's talk about, how we can do this [00:18:00] really well, a pitch. so what is at the core of a great pitch?

Kris: Well, I always like, there's an American pitching coach and he always breaks it down to the three steps. And one is clarity. And then the other is,how, compelling, clear, compelling. And then the third thing is how credible is it? So the first thing I always have to think is, Whatever pitch you put together and you want to start at the beginning, but certainly you want to come back and review it, make sure it's clear that your points are communicated with sufficient clarity.

Kris: And I remember the funniest thing was I came to Singapore, one of the first times I heard a big pitching competition, one guy got up and he gave a very impassioned three minute pitch about his product was going to change the world as we know it, you know, everything would be different. You know, people wouldn't sweat and they would walk on water.

Kris: I mean, it's really a, you know, just this all out life will change. And at the end, one of the judges said, well, that was really interesting, but what exactly do you do? You know, he kind of left out the product they had and the problem they were solving, but it was just this huge. So, you know, [00:19:00] to really make clear, you know, we're making this thing and it has this purpose and, you know, it meets this need.

Kris: So, so that at the end, someone understands the, what you're doing and why you're doing it. And then the second thing is it has to be compelling. So this is why the point is sometimes what's compelling is it's vivid. I can kind of sense when I see that. Hey, you know, like the iPhone. This is going to change the world.

Kris: you know, when you, when the first time I look chat GPT, this is going to change the world. You just see this thing is. This is a breakthrough and it doesn't take a lot to do that. So it's compelling. How can you make your product compelling? And sometimes I found guys that have absolutely staggeringly fascinating and exciting stuff.

Kris: They have a wonderful capacity to make it extremely dull and boring. and on an uninspiring. So, so you may need help on that. Particularly, I always joke, my father was an engineer. My mother was an English teacher. My father was great at presenting information. He was very excited about what he did, but could not be understood and [00:20:00] wasn't really compelling, but I was able sometimes at the dinner table to help him explain what he was doing in a way that my mother, who was not technical at all.

Kris: it and understand the value. So it's clear, compelling, and then the last thing is credible. And credibility is the hardest thing, particularly for a young startup, a lot of times to do. Credibility would be things like. You know, we have a patent. Oh, it could be a thousand things. We have a patent. We have someone on our team.

Kris: That's a serial entrepreneur. we have vertex ventures or someone investing in us. We already have a name investor. So anything that you can do that gives people like, Hey, I like these guys. This is good. We already have traction. We already are selling it. We already have a notable customer. Anything like that.

Kris: That makes me feel like, Hey, you've really de risked this a lot. I feel confident that you're going to move along. It was funny recently. I had a guy going through a whole pitch and only at the very end, he lists his advisors and he says, one of them is our investor. And this guy was like a name investor in the U S I mean, like a really big [00:21:00] name.

Kris: And I said, wait, this guy is your investor. Yeah. And you're waiting now to like the very end of the pitch after you've probably bored them and confuse them. And there, I said, you start with that. This is who we are and such and such as investing. And so let me tell you why. And as soon as you say that, such and such as investing, you get them interested.

Kris: So kind of the credible and the compelling come together. Then you have to be clear about why they're interested and why it's compelling and why you're credible.

Rahul: so as a founder, how do you, go about doing this? So you talked about this sort of framework to have right, clarity. compelling and credibility.

Rahul: That's the three things. And then there are also different types of pitches for your cocktail and networking and so on and so forth. So, okay. When I was a founder, the thing that I sort of used to build this was like, um, an exercise in the book to sell as human by Daniel H Pink. So he has this multiple sort of [00:22:00] pitch one online pitch and you know, the Pixar pitch and many other pitches.

Rahul: so if you're a founder, what is the sort of advice that you would give on how to go about doing this?

Kris: Well, I'm going to be very self serving here and say, get help. II'm absolutely serious. A lot of times I work with guys, I had a guy one time and I was putting on a class in storytelling, which I think is the backbone and foundation of pitching.

Kris: And I said, you ought to come to my class. I'm putting on, I'm storytelling today. Oh, I don't have time. Why? Because I'm preparing a pitch to go out and I'm having trouble raising funding. I said, maybe you're having trouble raising funding because you don't know how to tell your story.and this was, I mean, it's kind of ironic.

Kris: Sometimes we're very busy putting together slide decks and trying to cross all the T's and dot all the I's and we haven't sat back and gotten some help. Uh, a third party that will look at it more impartially, maybe with some experience and help us to at least get the first cut of that. So the first thing I always say is get help.

Kris: Do not try if you can. If you can avoid it, try not to do this on your own. I feel like this is something [00:23:00] I have to do by myself. So that'd be the first. if you can. If, beyond that, if you can't get help or what you need to be on that is really to sit downand think about it from the perspective of your audience.

Kris: Try to understand that it doesn't mean you're going to get it right the first time, but it means you're going to say, okay, at least I'm thinking about it. And I can test this against the audience and I can ask questions. I actually use AI sometimes to help me with pitches and the reason I'll use it as I'll go and I'll say, okay, you're my audience.

Kris: Take this as position frame, frame the response. You're my audience. You're an investor. you're a brain surgeon. You're whatever it is. I'm the audience I'm talking with. You know, what is most important to you help me understand what's important to you and how I should frame it and sometimes it will give me some insights coming back that I then use.

Kris: Now again, it takes me as a human being some time to digest that and make sense of it. But and then, you know, and then maybe eventually even say, here's my deck, upload it. evaluate it? Does it answer the [00:24:00] questions you want? And again, AI is not perfect. It's not a human. It doesn't have all the nuances, but it often for a first cut of a pitch, it'll start to take you a bit closer to where you need to be.

Kris: Yeah. It gets you started. It gets you started. And at least hope, you know, one guy said, he says, I like it because I think at least it gets me beyond stupid. You know, it gets me at least to the point where I'm a bit clueless, but I'm, I don't seem like a complete train wreck when I get in front of the front of my audience.

Rahul: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.so you have a core sort of framework to build a pitch, but then, what then are the elements of a great pitch? Um, and like how do you go about answering them in a, in a structured way?

Kris: Okay. Wow. it's hard to generalize all pitches. 'cause again, they'll have different.

Kris: Different audiences and the elements will be different,

Rahul: specifically startup pitching for funding for funding. Okay,

Kris: So the first thing I would say is, you know, again, who are you think who you're talking with and,and really put together a storyboard of what you want to do.

Kris: So, so I remember [00:25:00] working with a team one time and it was at, uh, one of the corporate startup accelerators and she's brilliant young woman. I mean, just. You know, off the scale and what she was working on was really intriguing, but I would find a lot of times we would put her pitch together.

Kris: She would just kind of go off the rails and kind of go off and ramble off into other areas and it wouldn't quite come together. And so I sat down and I said, Let's just write this out. It's a five minute pitch. That's about maybe a couple of pages of text. Let's just write out your pitch. Literally write it out as a story on paper.

Kris: Before we even start thinking about the slides we're going to have. Before we even start thinking about the visuals or anything. Let's just write it out. Can we understand it? If you just sat there and explained it to me, does it make sense? Can I follow it? Is it persuasive? And we did that. And then we took it and we went and found some of her slides didn't work.

Kris: We had to create a couple of new slides. We had to set up, do some different transitions and she had to practice it. I said, the ideal is that you can basically [00:26:00] recite this without reciting it. You don't want to sound like I've memorized something because, um, I had to do something recently. A half hour talk.

Kris: Which I had to literally read off the teleprompter for the first time. I can actually make that work because I got the training to do that. It sounds kind of fresh, but most of us, if we read something or it's recited, it sounds very robotic and very stiff and very, even worse than robotic.

Kris: I think chat GPT does better sometimes than we do. It sounds that way and you don't want to. So it's like you want to know the material, but you want to say it a little bit differently. It's a little bit fresh. It's a little bit new. So, so, so write it out. And you have the basic structure of it in the first and then sit down and say, okay, are any pieces missing?

Kris: Is there any key information that I'm not including? Include that and then start putting together slides. And again, there are dozens of lists of slides and it depends on whether it's a, whether it's a three minute pitch, five minute pitch, 10 minute pitch, extended pitch, you'll have more details. And then I [00:27:00] put together a presentation deck if I have it from that.

Kris: And then I practice it and sometimes when I practice it, so I had a case one time I was heading up a team here, I was a CEO for a few years and I had to pitch for a half million dollar grant and it was really a difficult time because the family had gone through some unexpected crisis just before that and I was delayed getting things ready, but I was scrambling at the last minute.

Kris: I thought they weren't gonna let me pitch. Present at this particular round, but I explained the problem and they said, okay, we'll give you an extra week. Get the final pitch to a site. I scrambled, I got it done. I tried to make it simple, got it to them. And then I literally probably practiced it maybe 80 times.

Kris: I practiced on myself. I recorded it. I practiced it in front of my wife. I practice it in front of our team. I practice it in front of people who are just patient enough to listen to me. And I got to the point that it made sense. And at that point. When I got up and I did it, it wasn't stressful because I'd done it so many times it was very easy to get up and I kind [00:28:00] of more or less knew it by heart and went through.

Kris: So that's kind of where you want to get. And again, you won't necessarily be there the first time, but as you get experience, you'll find that when Steve drops pitches, he does it maybe practices for a week, hundreds of times and every little nuance is right and we won't necessarily get there, but that's kind of the direction you need to go in.

Rahul: So you're practicing it. A number of times, but who are you trying to get, practice it to, sometimes you can practice it looking at the mirror and in front of your team and who are the right people sort of maybe to practice.

Kris: generally the more the merrier. It's nice to practice in front of people who don't understand it, that aren't familiar with it.

Kris: Maybe not even necessarily investors, but just talk to some people. Can I go over and meet another startup team? And then at the end say, what's interesting about this, you know, and what do you remember or can you kind of give me, what do you think are the high points of this? And if they can't give it back to you, it means [00:29:00] that probably something's not right and you need to tweak it and, and develop it a little bit.

Kris: Or if you find there's consistently a misunderstanding, they think you're doing A and you're actually doing B, then maybe you need to change it a little bit to get there. so, so that's kind of the process you go through on pitching. and again, the first thing is, again, think about your audience. What do they want to hear?

Kris: And then the final thing is, I think, unlike me today less is more so really think about you know What's the basic stuff that I really need to get across and what can I comfortably do in the time? I'm allowed and I've had guys we go through and they're like, oh should I do this? Should I do this?

Kris: Should I do this? I said you got three minutes. Should I do this? You got three minutes. And why do you keep telling me? We have three minutes. I said because whatever you Has to work in those three minutes. If you get to the end of three minutes and you're still rambling on and oh, I need a little more time.

Kris: I said, it's almost a killer because the audience will say if they don't have the discipline to work within the time given, then do they have the discipline to launch a billion [00:30:00] dollar company? And should I invest in them or should I buy from them? So always, time is always very important.

Rahul: And when it's an investor looking at a startup, as an investment opportunity, what are they looking for?

Kris: Wow. A lot of things. I think, you know, the first is.

Kris: it's hard to put your finger on exactly. It's, and I hate to say it almost, but I think in a sense it's almost likability. Do I feel comfortable if I'm going to give this guy money, if I'm going to be talking with him or her over the next few years and have my money, am I comfortable with them? Do they come across as someone that I would like to be interacting with on a day to day basis?

Kris: So I always say is that we think the deck is the pitch, but actually we're the pitch. And so they're looking at that. Do they seem confident? do they seem, confident, not overconfident, but confident, a balanced confidence? Do they have a certain degree of humility? In other words, they realize, hey, I don't have it all, I'm still [00:31:00] working on it, but I'm, I know I've got a lot to learn in coachability and then finally do they have energy and likability.

Kris: So I mean, and again, that's probably not an exhaustive list, but you really need to come. So a lot of times I tell guys, practice how you speak. You know, you don't deliver things in a staccato way. A staccato monotone and one guy said, you sound like my computer modem on my first, my, when I first connected a prodigy,da, no, you're talking to me.

Kris: You're sharing with me. You're excited. Pause. Take a breath. Occasionally use your hands. Be a little bit more, a little bit more animated in all of those things are really part of the pitch. So I've actually had guys sometimes say, I want to invest in this guy. I don't really understand exactly what he's doing.

Kris: I didn't quite get all the. sounds exciting, but I just like him. So I want to have another meeting with him or with her. And that's something you have to really cultivate.

Rahul: Okay. So this likeability, what creates likeability?

Kris: Okay. [00:32:00] Well, I mean, it's hard to put your finger on everything, but I think, you know, one of the things I say sometimes is smile.

Kris: I mean, like you and I are smiling at each other. We're comfortable. We're comfortable talking. I think it's a certain level of energy. Okay. it's a, and it's a responsiveness and I said, one of the things is if you feel like this guy is delivering this, um impassioned statement that, you know, we will not swerve and nothing will, you know, too much of that and you feel like, okay, is he going to be coachable?

Kris: Is he going to be prepared? or is she going to be ready if, you know, If suddenly something happens and the whole market changes, so we're looking for clues like that and you're trying to read the person and hear that, but that sometimes will be almost as important as the content of the pitch. The content of the pitch needs to be right, but the content of the pitch or the person is pitching also needs to be right.

Rahul: Yeah. And it's how you deliver as well, right? How you tell

Kris: your story. so one of the things I always tell guys, I said, watch TEDx presentation. Sometimes it helps. we [00:33:00] learn by doing and watch how they do it because these guys are coached. There's a whole methodology to doing that. In fact, it was a Canadian comedians.

Kris: One time they did a mock TEDx pitch where they just walked through and did, you know, here's, I'm doing this and now I'm saying this. And it was funny because you could actually see there's a certain program structure and form to it. Yeah. but it also gives you a sense of how people respond to ideas and proposals presented that way.

Kris: So watch people that are doing it and learn to imitate some of that.

Rahul: Okay, so what would be the structure? Is it just telling a story that is very coherent?

Kris: First thing, well, I guess if someone came down and said, what's the magic? And again, I usually go through the thing is I want to say, okay, there's, I need, and again, it doesn't necessarily need to be in this order, though it often will be particularly the first time you do it.

Kris: I need to know really what's the background of what you're doing. Why should I even care? why is this exciting? And this is more complicated if [00:34:00] it's not something that's familiar to us. So if I'm talking about something that's a problem, every one of us experiences every day. Like, you know, I don't know, it's like, you know, getting up, how much time it takes to brush your teeth properly or the fact, you know, whatever, if you, something I can relate to, then it may be very quick and you don't need to spend a lot of time on it.

Kris: If it's something that's a bit more obtuse, maybe not familiar, you need to help people understand, hey, every year, you know, this many people die from this or companies lose this many money or whatever it is.

Rahul: That hook, I think, is what I

Kris: think of. It's that hook. And that, well, it's a hook, but it's also just what's the space I'm working in and why should anyone even care?

Kris: And then the second thing is somehow in your pitch, you should cover, if it's so obvious, if it's a real problem, and now you pointed out to me, hey, companies are spending a lot of money or they're losing a lot of money or these things are happening, surely you guys aren't the only one who's working on this.

Kris: tell me you're not the only ones, because if you're the only ones working on them, I think it's kind of crazy. There's got to be other people. You don't [00:35:00] have to necessarily go into detail and like list your competitors, but you can talk about, here's what people have tried to do already, and here is why it hasn't worked.

Kris: You know, here's what, where the gap is. And again, very often you may do this. Here's the background. Here's the gap. Here's the challenge. And we figured out, we've answered that question. We figured out how to fill that gap. And we're excited because we fill that gap and other people have looked at this and said, Hey, you've really addressed that particular issue.

Kris: And we're very excited. And you know, you're far enough along. We have subtraction. We have the first orders. we have the first expression of interest. We have the first distributors and things like that. And the final part of this, you're the, the, and the background, the, but there's a challenge and the, therefore we have the breakthrough.

Kris: And that's why I said, sometimes the breakthrough you make, you may reveal it at the end, you've built up to it and you reveal it. Not necessarily the end of the pitch, but after you've kind of gone through the other two, sometimes the breakthrough is so [00:36:00] startling that you want to reveal it at the beginning and then go back and kind of unpack the story.

Kris: So it's like you see a lot of times movies and TV shows sometimes now they start with like the crisis moment at the very beginning to get you engaged. The hero is about to be killed. and then they roll back and say, Two years earlier or six months earlier, and then they build up to that moment again, but at least they've got you hooked.

Kris: And so sometimes you're right, the hook could be your, it could be your breakthrough. The hook could be, you know, some vivid way of sharing why there's this gap out there. Or the hook could be really helping people understand how massive and important and economically important this problem is for investment purposes.

Rahul: Yeah. And going back to the whole persuasion thing and while you structure this persuasion thing has to, you know, sort of build up. That's how I think about it. At least you start with the hook. Then you're saying that, okay, there's this big issue, but we have a solution and it's also a business. [00:37:00]

Kris: So the first thing to persuade you, I really have to get your attention.

Kris: And like I said to guys, I said, if you don't have their attention, depending on what you're doing the first 30 seconds or most, maybe the first minute, even if it's a 10 minute pitch and I've watched guys do it and they get up and they, you know, the first thing they do, particularly if they're out of an academic background, they'll put up the first slide and then they feel I need to spend the first 30 seconds.

Kris: 30 or 40 seconds briefing you on what I'm going to say and kind of summarizing everything in advance in a very Kind of a very informative fashion And then you'll look around at some of the guys who already have their phone out and they're starting to check their messages Or see what's on calendar.

Kris: Remember you realize you've lost them And you can almost get now with our, with phones and computers, you can almost see that happening. So you really want to try to get their attention in the first 30 seconds to a minute at a most. And they're connected and it's not sufficient, but it's really necessary.

Kris: We don't have the attention span. We did, you know, 10 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, really have to get the attention. So the first [00:38:00] thing in that, And then you have to make it very clear why this is exciting, you know, there's this problem we're solving, you know, the world is going to come to an end, you know, those are the extreme cases, but there's some, there's going to be, you know, expense and pain and suffering if we don't solve this problem and we're the only ones, you know, that can do it because we've got this breakthrough that every, you know, the Holy grail that everyone's looking for.

Kris: And if you do that and it's credible, and they're comfortable with you and like you, then you're going to have a very high percentage of people that at least want to have the next conversation, at least want to go through and do their due diligence and see if this is something that they want to invest in.

Rahul: Yeah. Okay. So you mentioned about. Let's say you get three minutes or 10 minutes, and you, I mean, you do your pitch and then often, uh, so the mistake that I've made is like sometimes you prepare so much for the pitch and then you don't prepare for the questions that might come afterwards.

Kris: Yeah.

Kris: Yeah. And that can be deadly. [00:39:00] And,I've seen things. And again, I teach classes on pitching, and sometimes I'll talk about Q& A and that. I also teach classes sometimes on handling Q& A.and first is, it shouldn't be a break. The you that does the pitch shouldn't be a different you than the you that answers the questions.

Kris: And that's what's really funny sometimes. I see guys, they practice and their pitch is very clear and polished and very excited and very persuasive. And then when the Q& A comes, and then they get very wordy and they had long rambling answers and they try to like be very defensive about things.

Kris: So your pitch and your Q& A should have kind of the same tone and the same energy. I know that's hard, but practice it. So you practice your pitch, your answer Q& A, just the way you practice your pitching so that you're comfortable with it. you're not scared. If someone asks a weird question, you've got the ability to work through that.

Kris: And again, there's a whole art in this, but. What I would say is first is try to anticipate very likely questions if you can and head them [00:40:00] off in your pitch. And the thing that I find occasionally frustrating is when I'll hear a pitch on a practice, I'll go, You're going to get this question. And they'll go, Yeah, I almost always get that question.

Kris: Well, why don't you kind of answer it in your pitch? In the pitch, if you can, if you know that's a question or you know, that's a doubt that's going to be, why don't you handle it? You're so expensive. Um, you know, this is so bulky, whatever it is that you see the problem, why don't you address in the pitch?

Kris: No, because, you know, if they're really, and usually that means that I'm not comfortable usually about something I'm doing, and I really need to maybe deep dive beyond the pitch and figure out why I'm not comfortable dealing with this upfront. But the first thing is, if you can deal with it in a pitch, do that.

Kris: The second thing is, when you get a question, anticipate in advance what questions you're likely to get. And a lot of times when you work after a while, you'll get to the point, I know I'm almost always going to get this question. This is something that's really hard to explain exactly, they're going to ask me this.

Kris: This is always going to trigger it, the next thing, like, okay, what about this? So do that. And then the third thing is [00:41:00] practice answering questions so that you have short, quick, Concise answers to the most likely questions, and you can answer them without having to spend a lot of time.

Rahul: Yeah.

Kris: But again, Q& A, you could have, we could have a whole nother session just on Q& A.

Rahul: Okay. So, does the way you end The pitch, lead to better Q& A sessions or, okay, another way to ask is like, how should you end a pitch?

Kris: Okay, um, so let's just assume we're discussing more of a formal pitch where you have a slide deck and you have a presentation, your slides, and again, whole nother art form to this, to the deck and the preparation and I'm, you know, simplicity, clarity.

Kris: Strong visual images, easy to read, all those things in the deck. But at the end of the deck, what we're increasingly doing, I see a lot of teams doing at the end is they'll try to summarize, you know, what are the two or three takeaways I'd like you to have from my pitch? And you know, sometimes it's a form we've had, like I've worked [00:42:00] with programs formally.

Kris: You have to have those three. The things I want you to remember is this. and unfortunately, some guys will go like. we're a very passionate team, and we're, you know, this is a billion dollar market and, we have a patent and, you know, you fall asleep,but I tell him, look, every other team that's pitching has a passionate team and a billion dollar market and a patented technology.

Kris: What is it that's different about you? What is something? And you've done the whole pitch. What is the one thing you want them to remember? And sometimes when you do this, you actually have to go back in the pitch and say, you know, I really didn't make that clear in the pitch itself. And the pitch needs to be reorganized, but it might be something like, you know, every company is looking for this particular solution to this problem.

Kris: And we've, you know, there's a huge need for it. You know, we already have, you know, expressions of interest from 16 companies and, we have a quick path to being able to get, you know, our first. Five million dollars in sales in the next year, something that an investor is going to look at and say, okay, that's interesting to me.

Kris: And then at the end of the pitch, you leave that slide up and maybe below [00:43:00] it, you have a QR code and an email address, how they can get hold of you, but you leave that slide up. The idea of coming to the last slide and the last slide being your email address and a QR code and QR codes go stale, by the way, so you have to be careful with that.

Kris: But being an email address or website, okay, that's not what you want is you want this burning into their brain. You're reminding them. And then when they started their Q and a this helps to focus their attention and maybe they didn't quite get it. But now they Oh, yeah, I didn't quite catch that.

Kris: But that's there. And then you ask, you know, thank you. Happy to answer any questions you might have. And you launch into it.

Rahul: Okay. So the ask is also important, right?

Kris: Yeah. And I think that's at the end. Yeah. That, that, that's back before the, then again, I haven't gone through the whole thing, so you're doing the pitch.

Kris: And usually the last question before that is, is what we're looking for is, and again, You may think it's obvious because you know what it is. But sometimes the audience doesn't know what it is. And most commonly, if it's an investment, the ask is you're [00:44:00] looking for X amount of money? Money. Yeah, you're looking for money.

Kris: You're looking for an investment. And it may be more detailed. You know, we're doing a safe note round or we're looking for a Series A investment of this amount of money. Typically, I, again, I don't want to go too deep down in this. I don't talk about the valuation of the company. Just say we're raising the money because valuation, all those things, more detailed later discussions.

Kris: And I would probably try to even avoid those in Q& A because it's, it frames your whole follow on discussions incorrectly. So you say, you know, money, it could also be, we're looking for distributors. We're looking for customers. We're looking for introductions to people that, you know, whatever it is. So what is the, what is your, You know, what is your Christmas wish list coming out of it that you think is likely from the audience you have.

Kris: And again, you need to understand who the audience is and if those things are appropriate. if it's all investors, then you're probably not looking for customers. On the other hand, if it's a mixture of like investors, government, organizations and businesses, maybe it's appropriate to [00:45:00] ask for some of those other things.

Kris: So yeah, the ask comes before this final slide where they do the Q and A. And that's kind of the, I've done my, I've done my persuading. Now, here's what I would like to get if I've persuaded you, or at least here's my in game, if I've persuaded you on what we're looking for.

Rahul: Yeah. And Yeah. Um, okay, so you've pitched once, and then how often do you think a startup has to relook at their pitch, of likemost of the time, and then also how often do they have to change the pitch as the business progress?

Kris: Okay. I think you're constantly pitching, so you're constantly kind of evaluating your pitch and looking for, like I said, is there something in the pitch that's not working? And if you sense that from the questions you get or from the objections that people raise to what you're pitching, then you may need to go back and make an immediate change.

Kris: I learned this in sales. You know, if you're doing a sales pitch and [00:46:00] everyone, you Misunderstands it or objects or dismisses it for something, then maybe I need to go back and make a change right now. Cause I don't want to keep running a program, you know, it's like if you're in football, you don't want to keep running plays that you've shown don't work that, you know, you always lose, you'll change the play.

Kris: So obviously that's the first thing always, you're looking every moment to say that. Beyond that, I think you need to say, you know, is there a new insight that I've gotten that might make me do this better? So like this company I work with, I said, when I see the pitch, actually move the product to the beginning and use that as the gotcha before you go.

Kris: And that may be it. You know, I, it's not a bad pitch, but I can make it better with the change. Do that. But then the third thing, yeah, is your, is your business progressing? And if you're giving all the information, so for example, I talked about the importance of credibility. You know, I worked with a team recently and they were pitching and I realized the pitch they were doing was almost the same as the pitch they'd done when they were going through one of our accelerators.

Kris: And I said, wait a second, you guys are still [00:47:00] pitching. We have this idea, we're going to solve this problem. Only at the very end, do you talk about the fact that, hey, we've already got a half a million dollars in orders out of India from some big companies. Chemical companies. That comes at the beginning.

Kris: You move that back to the beginning, you emphasize it. It's not an afterthought. Hey, here's a technology that's being rapidly adopted by the chemical industry in India. We've already gotten our first half a million dollars in sales in the first six months without any promotion. Let me tell you why we're excited about it.

Kris: And suddenly the whole energy and the focus of the pitch changes. So you always have to be revisiting it as your reality changes, as where you are, who you are, maybe what you're doing shifts and don't just kind of. Lock it in place and freeze it for all eternity.

Rahul: And in this case also, is it better to have somebody else give you feedback that you trust or you think, founders themselves has that sort of, I mean,

Kris: I think, yeah, you obviously, you may want to, you may want to validate your, you may think, Hey, I just did that pitch.

Rahul: Yeah. Okay.

Kris: And you [00:48:00] know, you're another team member, you're a friend watching it.

Kris: Here's my read. Did you see it the same way? I mean, that's not bad to do. It's always good to get a reality check from someone else. But sometimes you may have to go with your gut. You know that's possible, but you also look for inputs from other people. So if you have a friendly person in the audience who's watched it, say, look, just be really honest with me.

Kris: What did you think of the pitch? you know what I'm doing? How would you change it up and on board that? I mean, you're going to respond to everything, you know, too many spook cooks spoil the broth kind of thing,but listen for that input and look at changing it. And it probably one of the most difficult teams I work with one time is a really interesting solution.

Kris: And I thought it was a very simple thing to explain, but he had a certain way that he would pitch it that I found people didn't really understand and didn't respond to him when he would pitch it, the questions would always go off into really unproductive kind of area, and they would really focus on like the cost and, you know, Can't you do it cheaper and this and that and I said, you're not getting [00:49:00] him excited about what you're doing.

Kris: It's almost like the iPhone and I said, here, I've got an iPhone and it's better than anything out there. And it's a thousand dollars. Well, that's expensive. You have to really sell them on, here's what the iPhone does. You know, it's like Stevie. it's an internet connected device. It's a, you know, it's a phone, you know, it's a, it's an email.

Kris: You, you sell it on what it does. So I said, you need to rethink it. And he was so resistant. Actually, I've never really done this or really rarely done this. He's so resistant. And I said, okay. Let's get a guy, one of the guys, it was one of the guys at the university. I said, he's in the investment area of the space.

Kris: I said, let's get him to listen. I said, you give your pitch. And then I'm going to give the pit your pitch the way I think you should do it. It was really cruel. I mean, it really was not a nice, but I was so like exasperated that I couldn't seem to get him to change and revamp it. And so he gave his pitch and the guy asked him questions.

Kris: And then I said, now, let me, yeah. The same product, same thing. Let me pitch it differently. And here's how I think it should be pitched. And I pitched it [00:50:00] and I wouldn't say our style of pitching was that different or I'm that much more energetic or what everything, but the guy goes, wow, so that's what it does.

Kris: That's exciting. And you know, and it was like the guy said,he just learns. I couldn't quite understand that because I was so locked in on here's what I thought was the, here's what I thought was important. And I never really stepped back and said, you're right. I'm really emphasizing all the wrong things and it's not right.

Kris: And again, I don't like to do that. That's probably like a, that's like a American football. They call it the Hail Mary, you know, when you just throw the ball all the way down the field because the guy's going to catch it. And I'm not a football fan,but sometimes you have to do that. And when you see someone do your pitch, yeah.

Kris: better. It wasn't perfect because I probably had some of the technical details wrong. You seem to do it better. You suddenly go, Oh, now I see what's possible. And so that rare occasions I've seen, I've done that, but I'd like for people to arrive at that themselves rather than having the coach have to do it for them.

Rahul: so far we talked about the verbal, sort of pitch and also maybe using the tech, [00:51:00] but what about, elements like. Images of videos or even just product demo. Right. And, there are, I mean, nowadays a lot of companies have this sort of notion, uh, very structured notion document, which is all the information that anybody would ever want in such high details.

Kris: So,gives you nosebleeds. Yeah.

Rahul: Yeah, but, uh, I think of all these things, the best sort of effective way would be just to show people what it does.

Kris: Yeah. Right? I agree. And I have a term, some of this is show me, don't just tell me.and I think, yeah, a couple of things. One is I typically in a pitch as a rule, I suggest not strongly suggest not trying to do a live demo of your product.

Kris: And the reason is I have seen. Live demos go wrong too many times. And I mean, if it'll go wrong [00:52:00] for someone like Bill Gates or for Steve Jobs who have a, you know, billion dollar companies behind them with a whole, you know, army of people trying to make sure that the demo works exactly right at some big event.

Kris: If it can happen for them, go wrong for them, it can go wrong for you. So this whole like, Oh, I know it'll work perfectly. So generally don't do a live demo. Or only have it as a backup. I've got it available there after the pitch. If you'd like to show it, I can show you a live demo. But don't do it as a pitch.

Kris: Because I've seen people fail a demo for whatever reason. A myriad of reasons. One guy, one time, everything was perfect. We're inside. He's showing his website and someone starts doing work on it and it breaks down in the middle of a very important presentation. And he didn't time with his team. Don't do that.

Kris: So he went and corrected it. Next time, go back. Now I can do the live demo. I said, have screenshots, be ready to work, walk them through. no, I can do a live demo. Much more impressive. Goes in. We're too far inside the building. He can't get a signal. They won't let him use the wifi. And then And so he can't do a live demo.

Kris: So all sorts of things that you think I can anticipate [00:53:00] everything. if it can go wrong, Murphy's Law can go wrong, will go wrong. So don't do a live demo. But what you can do is think about how can I show something that's very understandable in a short video segment, maybe 15 to 20 seconds of video embedded in your presentation.

Kris: Um, so I was working with a team, overseas and. And she was able in the presentation to say, our technology, makes this process better and higher numbers show how much better we are versus the lower numbers. And, you know, she makes that point all the way through, which we're able to get these high numbers versus the low.

Kris: And finally, towards the end of her presentation, she showed a video that she made in the lab and she showed hers performing and it gives numbers of like 43. And she says the current one working, it gives numbers of like 15. And you don't necessarily need to understand. All the details, but that kind of like, Oh, wow, you know, I, that's, you said high, big numbers are good and low numbers are bad.

Kris: And here's why. And you're showing really high numbers and really low. I'm kind of [00:54:00] interested. That kind of convinces me that you have something there. And so that's a very simple kind of demo, even in a very technical area where I can't really get you inside all the arcane technical details. But if you have something that's more, Understandable consumer.

Kris: Yeah, absolutely. Show them a demo of how well it works and something memorable. But again, my rule of thumb is a short video embedded in most cases better and safer than trying to do a live presentation. Um, the other thing is occasionally you can, if you think it's really striking is it's a physical product, you can actually hold it and show it.

Kris: And so, and again, I'll go back to Steve Jobs because I like him, he would say, look how thin this is, and that's much more vivid to hold it up and show you how thin this is compared to anything you've seen before, or look how easy, you know, how, and that will convince people. So look at those opportunities, not necessarily a full blown demo, just to show the static object and how remarkable it [00:55:00] is.

Kris: That will be convincing. But those are things, those are some things to try.

Rahul: And you've also mentioned that the pitch is really you and doing this podcast, what I've realized is that if I have to succeed, this is something that is true with podcasting. the success of the podcast is really dependent on not the guest who comes on the show or the topic.

Rahul: It really depends on me. Well, I like to

Kris: think it's both. I mean, you want to have good guests, but you're right. If you yourself. You know, sit there and look at me outline, then it's not going to work, obviously.

Rahul: Yeah. Similarly, you make the argument that, um, the pitch is you in the end.

Kris: Yeah, you, yeah. I say you are the pitch.

Kris: Not that the other things aren't important. You have to have a really clear deck, a clear story. All those things are absolute, but you can have all those things. And if you yourself don't come across right, you may struggle with getting. And in fact, I remember one time I had a guy pitch and the investor came up.

Kris: We're chatting afterwards. I like the product. I like [00:56:00] the company, I think it's great. But I don't want to work with this guy. He says if they'll replace him as a CEO, and I hate to say that's really harsh, but you know, I can't work with this guy. I mean, not that I, not that you mean about him or bad about him, but I just think the way he communicates, the way he puts things, it's just something's not right.

Kris: And that's, you don't want to get, you don't want to get that. And most of them are not that extreme, but you really want to be the other way that I'd like to work with these guys. Yes. Maybe not right now. Maybe in the future. Maybe I'm not going to invest at this point, but come back to me guys. I think you really are on to something.

Kris: Um, I had one of my teams, they pitched at the, Livability challenge and at the end, the investor, he says, one of the judges, he goes, you guys have that X factor. I don't know what it is, but I want you to succeed. And that's really what That's really what you want. You obviously like to have these guys going, maybe I'm not going to invest in you, but I'd like to see you succeed.

Kris: And if I could invest in you and I would, and if I knew someone to invest in you, I would introduce you because I want you to be successful. I want this thing to be a [00:57:00] breakthrough. If you've done that,that's a gold standard pitch. And then we always get there, but that's what you're, that's what you're striving for.

Rahul: Yeah. And this also goes back to the whole likeability and ability to connect and things like that. Okay. So one final thing. Uh, what is the best pitch that you've ever heard?

Kris: Okay. Well, let's set aside like the superstars, like, you know, Senec or Jobs or some of these guys. And, I think that one of the most interesting, I just, it's a very memorable pitch and I heard it relatively early here.

Kris: And it was when I came to Singapore and I found when I arrived in Singapore, we've gotten better, but our ability to storytelling pitch culturally was not up to the level I was seeing in the U S and elsewhere. But I had a young American guy got up and he gave a pitch one time. And he started out, it was really interesting because I usually do a storytelling example.

Kris: He started out and he said, when I was young, he said, I'm a pretty smart guy. He said, I didn't have to work [00:58:00] hard in school. I got good grades, finished, no real sweat. My brother came up behind me, also pretty smart guy, didn't have to work that hard in school, finished, no trouble. Our sister came up behind us.

Kris: He said, she worked evenings and weekends. She studied, she struggled. She just. Just working so incredibly hard all the way through school and he said she managed to graduate but it was a terrible struggle for her. She said, but she's also really smart and he said the problem she had was dyslexia.

Kris: She couldn't interpret words on the page the way the rest of us can as easily and she struggled with reading and absorbing written material and she went and did lots of therapy and all this help but it was expensive. It was challenging. It was hard to get them. And so what I've done now is I've developed an online platform.

Kris: To help young people, children, particularly with dyslexia to have quick, easy access to a platform to go through the exercises to make it easier to deal with their dyslexia and to have less trouble at [00:59:00] school. That was it. 45 seconds. And again, perfect pitch because he relates it back to himself. And you can't always have that opportunity.

Kris: But if you can have that, if you can ever relate it back to things that people can feel and see and understand. It's very memorable. I still remember that pitch now, 15 years later, just because it was so sharp and clear and simple and everything after that. It's like, yeah, like, you know, this one guy said, it's like almost a take my money pitch.

Kris: I just want to, I want to invest in this guy.

Rahul: Yeah. You don't care about the details now. He sold on the store. Yeah.

Kris: Yeah. I mean, you want the details later, but if you really got them.

Kris: And then you've backed it up by the fact, well, this is a huge market, you know, and there's, this is a growing market and all these children being, you know, all these children that had been bad in school. Now we can identify them and help them. You really make a whole pitch out of that. But that's one of the best pitches that I've seen in that respect, because I think he covered all the basic points on a good pitch.[01:00:00]

Rahul: Yeah, this is great, Chris. Thank you so much for taking the

Kris: time. It's been fun.