Creating Your Pitch Content: Problem, Solution, Market, and Business

For as long as I've been teaching presentation skills—and I confess it's been quite a long time—I've encouraged entrepreneurs to start with content when creating an engaging, memorable pitch. I think one of the finest resources out there right now about creating pitch content is Chris Lipp's The Startup Pitch. Chris has taken a survey of the thousands of pitches he's seen here in Silicon Valley and beyond to analyze what exactly entrepreneurs include to ensure an effective pitch. From that analysis, he's devised a very simple four-part structure to an effective pitch (Figure 4.1).

First, we must convince the audience of the problem. Then, we have to present our solution—and its direct connection to the details of the problem we've just outlined. Next, we must demonstrate that there's a market for solving this problem. It's not simply that we have a problem parking in downtown San Francisco, for example, but that many people share this San Francisco parking problem … and that many cities share this issue and would benefit from the solution we're offering. (And not only would they benefit, but they'd pay for that solution!) Finally, we need to demonstrate that we have a viable business model: that by solving this problem for this market, your investors stand to receive revenue. Whether that model is an ad model, a subscription model, direct sales, or B2B sales, we need to demonstrate that we have a clear plan to extract value.

Let's look individually at each of these four areas.

Building the Bridge: An Exercise to Tighten Your Pitch

Much of the pitch work I've done at Stanford has been with teams of entrepreneurs preparing to deliver a pitch together. Most of this has been through Stanford's highly successful Ignite Program, started by Garth Saloner and now led by Yossi Feinberg. This certificate program is offered on campus in the summer as a full-time four-week session and in the winter as a part-time three-month experience. Each summer, we also invite a group of military veterans to campus for a tailored version of Ignite, addressing their distinct needs as they transition from the military to civilian life as entrepreneurs.

In these team settings, one participant acts as the “idea generator”—the person who proposes the product or innovation for the entire team's work, from the creation of the business plan to the pitch. I visit the participants early in the course to provide the basics of effective pitching; then, about a week before their final pitches to an invited group of VCs, I return to provide coaching for the teams.

These coaching sessions serve as a gating function for the teams. Almost always, it's clear that few groups have actually rehearsed as a team before meeting me. They often present five or six “individual presentations” on the same topic. There may be a clear delegation of duties, but not a sense of cohesion. They've worked in silos to prepare the material. Some teams even show “frankendecks”—a slide deck stitched together with inconsistent formatting, colors, and fonts, giving a sense that the presentation is not a single entity, but rather a collection of mismatched parts. While the pitches are rocky in this state, they're certainly not without potential. Walking through my bridge exercise often helps create the alignment needed (Figure 4.2).

To begin, I approach a full whiteboard in the classroom. On the left side, I draw one bank of a river and on the right, the opposite bank. I start on the left side, explaining, “This is Point A, where your investors begin: disengaged, uninformed, potentially even resistant.”

Then I move to the far right side: “And here is Point B, where you want them to arrive: engaged, enrolled, committed, maybe even ‘invested’ in the idea so much that they open their address books or checkbooks to help you succeed. To get from Point A to Point B, you need to construct a bridge through your team presentation to get them across the river.”

Next I draw the arch supports stretching from Point A to Point B. The arch represents the “big idea” for the innovation. I ask the students, “If you had to synthesize the pitch into seven to eleven words, few enough to fit on a billboard, what would you say?” We wordsmith for a while on this and ultimately settle on a working theme for the pitch that encompasses problem, solution, and opportunity. That idea becomes the bridge connecting Point A to Point B (Figure 4.3).

Still, even with a bridge scaffold from A to B, we need a platform on which to walk from one side to the other. Each speaker provides a “little idea,” which edges us from the first words of the pitch (capturing attention) to the final words of the pitch (inviting participation). In this portion of the activity, students begin to see how their pieces connect to the others. Team members will begin to trade content elements with one another. This more holistic view of the presentation starts to take on value.

Figure 4.4 shows one example of a bridge completed by 2019 Veterans Ignite Program team. They generously allowed me to use this to illustrate the concept. A team of six came together around one member's startup idea, Amissa, an innovative wearable device to help track Alzheimer patients who've wandered away. Jon Corkey, a 25-year Navy veteran, founded the firm based in Charlotte, North Carolina. After beginning the startup process on his own, he came to Stanford to flesh it out more fully and build his skills as an entrepreneur. Once I had sketched out the bridge exercise on the whiteboard, Jon's team struggled to define the big idea or overarching theme for the presentation. Usually, I try to encourage a team to capture the essence of this theme in seven to eleven words (like a billboard or bumper sticker). We settled on “Alzheimer's sucks! We support patients, families, caregivers, and researchers with a tracking companion.”

Next I went to each member of the team and asked them to similarly articulate the “little idea” that they were contributing to the larger presentation. Each little idea would fit into the big idea with the same constraints (Figure 4.4).

But the real magic came when Jon synthesized his closing call to action, which connects the bridge back to the other shore (Figure 4.5): “We have traction. We need contacts and capital to succeed.”

A few days after our work together, the Amissa team delivered their final pitch to a group of VCs who found the team's work and Jon's innovation impressive. The team shared with me that the bridge helped them to be more compelling and more cohesive. Jon's now back in North Carolina pursuing the venture even further. You can follow his progress at Amissa.com.

Pitching on CUE: Curiosity, Understanding, and Evangelism

Before we end this section on pitching, there's one final framework you may find helpful. Our colleague Burt Alper, who teaches pitching in several settings, reminds his entrepreneurs to remember the acronym CUE. He suggests that all pitches have three primary segments: curiosity, understanding, and evangelism.

During the curiosity phase, an entrepreneur should capture the audience's attention. Make the potential investors or partners curious, ideally dying to know more. You can achieve this curiosity by presenting compelling research, asking insightful questions, or sharing vivid stories. However you decide to do so, draw your audience in and inspire them to want to know more.

The next stage, Burt explains, is where you must create understanding. You might create understanding by providing technical details, sharing sketches, or conducting a demo of your product. Standing on the platform you've built in the first phase, you must explain the innovation in a clear and simple fashion so that your audience truly understands it.

But creating curiosity and providing understanding is not enough. The third phase is to inspire the audience to become evangelists. He advises entrepreneurs to talk about future potential, massive scale, or significant value the product or service will provide. You want to create a reaction like “I can't wait to tell my partners about this” in the minds of those you pitch. As we have shared elsewhere in this book, you'll be most effective if you can “sell” in a way that feels authentic to you, yet still effective for the situation. Don't hesitate to “ask for the order.” Invite the listeners to take an action that moves them closer to being engaged and enrolled.

If you have made your audience curious, allowed them to understand your proposition, and evangelized through a clear ask, you will have met the main criteria of a successful pitch. If this pared-down model appeals, consider the CUE model another tool in your pitching toolbox.

Crafting Your Story

Remember that every good story charts a change—even a subtle one—in the conditions, attitude, actions, or feelings of the characters. What is the change your story charts? “We changed our environmental practices” is not yet a story, because it doesn't reveal any change. But “We were using three hundred plastic straws a day. One day, we saw a presentation on the effect of our waste. Then we changed our practice and eliminated plastic straws completely” is indeed a story (if a bare-bones one!). It shows a change over time. Once you're clear on the change your story reveals, experiment with how the techniques below can bring your story to life.

Delivering Your Story

From our conversation about verbal, vocal, and visual communication, you know that crafting your story's narrative is only part of the storytelling opportunity. A great storyteller also considers how to deliver the story to best effect, capturing and holding the audience's attention throughout.

Delivering Your Story with Data

Have you ever had the experience of seeing data that you knew you'd never be able to unsee? When that story was told so well, and the data was so rich, that you knew you'd never forget what that data meant to you? For me, that moment was in August of 1999, when my best friend, Javier, twisted my arm to get me to sign up for the Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride. For six days, 2,500 of us rode our bikes from Fairbanks to Anchorage, Alaska, raising money for the AIDS vaccine.

The morning that we set out on our first ride, the organizers gathered us all together for an event meant to inspire us—not just to keep riding, but also to keep fundraising and collecting pledges on behalf of the vaccine long after our ride was over. As we sat there in our bike gear ready to take off, the organizers brought 34 people up onto the stage, all in jerseys bearing the logo of the ride. Twenty-eight of them were wearing black jerseys, and six of them were wearing yellow jerseys. Those 34 people represented the 34 million people affected by AIDS and HIV throughout the world at that time. The people in black jerseys represented the 28 million people in that group without access to the anti-retroviral drugs that we have access to here in the west. The six people in yellow jerseys represented the six million affected people—mostly living in the developed world—who had access to the drugs. Then 12 children stepped up onto the stage, all wearing red jerseys. These kids represented the 12 million children—mostly orphans living in Sub-Saharan Africa—who had lost both mother and father to the disease.

That example of storytelling with data still chokes me up 20 years later. And I can remember the numbers because someone was thoughtful about designing that story in a way where the numbers made a difference to me. This type of visual storytelling with data may not be available for most of the communication you do day to day, but I want to offer it as an aspirational touchpoint for thinking about what data can do for your audience when you position into an effective, compelling story.

Albert Einstein famously said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.” That's precisely what we're aiming for with the following tools for crafting data into story.

Develop the story before you develop the graphics  If you've ever seen an unintelligible slide, squinted at meaningless curves across confusing axes, or tried to make sense of what a scattergraph was trying to tell you—and we are sure you have!—you've witnessed the phenomenon of graphics preceding story. Not only is this approach hard to understand, but it fails to tell a story that will drive outcome for your audience. Thus the critical importance of developing your story before you develop your graphics. Think of your graphics as the tip of your communication iceberg: a tip of an iceberg represents only 10 percent of the total mass; fully 90 percent lies beneath the surface. Your graphic isn't your whole story—it's a representation of a small part of it.

So rather than starting by looking at your chart to find a story, start by looking at the data. Do some analysis within your idea to identify the themes, takeaways, and trends that are worth highlighting. Once I'm clear on the story I want to tell, sometimes I find it's helpful to test several different charts, graphs, or ways of visualizing the story to see which one works best.

Anytime we sit down to craft a narrative, it's valuable to consider the structure of a well-told story. In her 2011 TEDx East talk, Nancy Duarte references Freytag's pyramid to illustrate a structure I find particularly useful (Figure 4.6).

This model is over 100 years old, but we still refer to it today for good reason. It contains the most important elements of a story well told. Take a look at the beginning of the story path—notice how short the section devoted to opening and exposition is. Nine out of ten times, we don't need nearly as much windup as we think we do. Rather, we can keep the momentum of the story moving forward by moving to the central conflict as soon as possible. That conflict or inciting moment will create the action of our story, lead to its climax, and depending on what kind of story you're telling, to the falling action and the resolution.

Think of any great film you've seen in the past few decades. As a parent of a toddler, I'll admit the first movie that comes to mind is Moana. (Hey, it's good!) The setup of the movie is concise and the conflict arrives almost immediately: Moana's island lacks vegetation and the community doesn't have enough food. Most of the movie is devoted to the action as Moana sets out to find the all-powerful Heart of Te Fiti, finally finds it, and brings it back to her island. The quick resolution that follows shows vitality returning to the island.

This is the same kind of arc you can find in your data. What's the conflict? What's the action being taken to resolve or change the conflict? Your story may end at the climax if you're trying to get people to take action. Either way, be thoughtful about your story's arc.

Avoid the food charts (pies, donuts, and spaghetti)  The classic pie, donut, and spaghetti charts are rarely your best choice for telling a story with data, not only because, if you're like me, they're likely to make you hungry. These charts rarely format data in a way that is accessible to your audience—they make your data very difficult to interpret. Take a look at what I mean in Figures 4.7, 4.8, and 4.9.

Anyone trying to interpret the pie chart in Figure 4.7 would be hard-pressed to come up with a story. Is the bottom half of the pie chart meant to indicate some cautionary content? What should it mean? It's a lot of work to try to figure out what the presenter is telling us.

Now take the bar graph in Figure 4.8. This first bar graph shows exactly the same data, visualized differently. Can you interpret the data more easily now? You should be able to have a better sense of the takeaway your presenter has in mind when looking at the data in this different format. Especially when your data has many components or slices, you don't want to represent it in a pie, as the small visuals that result will be confusing.

Know Your Intent and Check Your Motives

At its heart, Brown believes that vulnerability is the best treatment for shame. In Daring Greatly she writes: “Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.” As leaders we can expand our influence if we can effectively harness the distinct power of vulnerability. Yet, proceed with caution. A leader who is trying to manipulate a team or client through “the act of vulnerability” will likely not succeed in the long run. That level of inauthenticity will, sooner or later, rise up and trip that leader. Recall the AIM model from Chapter One: “As a result of this communication what do I want the audience to think, feel, say, or do?”

If your motives for self-disclosure are self-serving, reconsider your choice to share. If, on some level, you are trying to meet a personal need by sharing, this may not be the time, place, or setting. Brown goes on to say, “I only share when I have no unmet needs I'm trying to fill. I firmly believe that being vulnerable with a larger audience is only a good idea if the healing is tied to the sharing, not to the expectations I might have for the response I get.”

Share with Your Confidants First, and Take Their Counsel

It's crucial that your significant other, business partner, direct supervisor, or other key confidants know your news before you make it public. In fact, a careful conversation with such a trusted partner may be the best way to assess your intent and motivation. If people you trust and who know you well do not think it's wise to divulge the information you're considering, it may at least be worth disclosing with caution. At the extreme, you don't want these trusted people to “learn the news when everybody else finds out.”

Those who've seen Hamilton know well the scene where Eliza learns of her husband's infidelity when he self-publishes a manuscript (the blogs of the late 1700s!) offering a political defense for the affair. While torching each love letter Hamilton ever wrote to her, Eliza sings, “In clearing your name you've ruined our lives.” While dramatized for the stage, the point is well made: First, tell those you care for most. Then decide (if you have a choice), in concert with them, whether it still makes sense to share the information more widely.

Consider the Setting and the Medium

Just as you want to try to control the narrative, you likewise want to consider where and how to disclose this information. While it can be very powerful to deliver personal news in person, that may be more challenging for you and your recipients. It can be harder to process news while facing the person who is delivering it. Consider all the avenues at your disposal: handwritten note, typed email, phone call, individual meeting over a meal, small group meeting, large audience—yes, even the TED stage. If you are clear in your intent and clean with your motives, the choice of setting and medium may be fairly straightforward.

At Stanford I teach a case (written by Reynoldo Roche while an MBA student at UVA) profiling Mark Stumpp, a chief investment officer for QMA, a division of Prudential. Mark chose to undergo surgery to transition from male to female, becoming Maggie Stumpp. In 2002, when this took place, there was very little guidance for firms on how to communicate news of this kind, but Prudential did a remarkably solid job. When it was time for Maggie to return to work, her supervisor first called colleagues with close proximity to tell them the news. The supervisor called them on their home phones over the weekend before Maggie returned. Then, for other employees in the firm, a memo was sent.

Plan in Advance How to Field Questions

If you opt to deliver your information orally, you should also choose whether you will take questions about this announcement or not. If you choose to merely share in one direction, without taking questions, you should provide a resource or avenue people can use to find out more.

I vividly recall when, in January 2009, the GSB was forced to lay off over 60 people in one day due to the financial crisis. Dean Bob Joss and Senior Associate Dean Dan Rudolph were clear on this point. All of the laid-off employees were notified on a Tuesday morning before noon. At 2:00 p.m. that day, Joss and Rudolph held a town hall to share the news with everybody at the school. They provided the evidence of the loss of endowment revenue, the rationale for the cuts they made, and the process moving forward without these staff members. Yet, knowing how emotional this might be for many people, they chose to not take any questions at this time. Rather, smaller team and department meetings were set up in the coming weeks to field questions. The clarity of this choice struck me as clear and completely appropriate. You must have some way for people to pursue answers if they have questions following your disclosure.

Prepare for the Consequences

It's best to have a “best/average/worst case” plan in place before the disclosure. It's entirely possible the news may have little to no impact; it may be more valuable for you to share than for the audience to hear. Yet, it's equally possible that it will have a greater impact than you would ever have imagined. The news could go viral (literally or figuratively) and you may have many more eyes and ears in the conversation than you ever dreamed. Quite often I find that having “planned for the worst,” the worst doesn't come to pass, but your confidence is heightened just knowing you have a plan.

Here, again, rely on the counsel of others. Find somebody you trust who has made a similar disclosure and see whether they can help you map out the potential ramifications. I don't know Chip Conley very well, but he took time to counsel me over the phone as I was considering doing my TED talk. He had similarly shared some of his own struggles in a TED talk and was generous, and candid, with his advice to me.

A Personal Story: My Own Journey of Self-Disclosure with My 2011 TED Talk

Many of you may have seen my TED talk, “Break the Silence for Suicide Attempt Survivors.” If not, please take four minutes now and watch the talk before you read the back story of this pivotal moment in my life. While the talk went live in 2011, a few months after I delivered it, the story begins at TED 2010. There, I heard a short three-minute talk by fellow participant Glenna Fraumeni that changed my life. She shared her struggles with a malignant brain tumor and her determination to persevere despite the diagnosis. She began the talk by saying the doctors had only given her three years to live; she ended by saying, “By Christmas 2011, I will probably be gone. Where will you be?”

Her probing question haunted me. I wrote in my journal, “When will I tell my story? Maybe next year?” When it came time to register for TED 2011, I saw a separate registration for TEDYou, where leaders get a chance to deliver a talk on stage. I discussed the idea with my husband, Ken, and a trusted advisor, Roger, and decided to register to speak. As a survivor of a fairly dramatic suicide attempt in 2003 (and several smaller attempts going back as far as the seventh grade), I believed strongly that we need to be more supportive of those who've survived such an attempt on their own lives.

I worked on my talk for several weeks and, again relying on trusted advisers, hit upon the structure of telling my own story in the third person. I spoke about myself as though I were someone else, a man named John. I did not know whether I would want to reveal who John truly was. So I composed a paragraph about two and a half minutes into the four-minute talk that began, “I know John's story well because I'm John.” I crafted this piece of the talk in such a way that if I chose not to, I could decide not to deliver that paragraph and the talk would still make sense. The impact would be less, but the paragraph was not necessary structurally. I had designed an “exit ramp” that I could choose to take or not take in the moment.

I prayed before walking out on stage, and knew that I would know whether to disclose when I got to that point in the talk. Today, I'm so glad that I did disclose, because I know the talk has made a much larger impact on the world with my own vulnerability visible and shame diminished. The reaction from the audience in Palm Springs was encouraging. I received a standing ovation and throughout the week people kept grabbing me for a coffee or a meal or just a hug. I was glad I disclosed.

But then TED wanted to put the talk up online. I was not sure I was ready for that much exposure. I was up for faculty reappointment at Stanford, and I didn't know how my tenured peers would feel about me admitting my struggles with depression and suicide. More urgently, I was not sure how I could face my class if the talk was seen and shared among the student body. I asked for time to decide. Even Chris Anderson himself reached out to me by email. He thoughtfully emphasized the choice was mine, saying:

In my opinion this talk would have a big impact if we release it on ted.com. With your permission, we'd very much like to. I think you will connect with a large number of people feeling the way you once did. And with people who know people in that situation. I also understand it's hard letting yourself be vulnerable in this way. I think that anyone with an ounce of humanity who sees this will find their respect for you rising. But even knowing that, it doesn't make it an easy decision. I do hope, though, that you'll be willing to do this. I think it will be a real gift to all of us.

As I considered, I reached out to my friend and faculty colleague, Jennifer Aaker, for advice. She's a well-regarded expert on meaning, purpose, and the power of story, and the author of The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Change. She not only knew the power of story and its ripple effects in social media, but also understood how such a step might impact my role in the institution and reappointment in particular. She said, “JD, you don't need to worry about the impact of a TED talk within the school. But are you sure you are ready for the attention you might face going so public with this? It could become quite intense.”

I took about another month to decide. During that time I lost another friend to suicide—someone with whom I'd attended school from childhood and graduated high school. If the intent of my talk was to “break the silence,” then it felt like posting a talk on TED was a pretty powerful way to do that. Together with the team at TED we chose June 11, 2011, as the date to launch. This marked the eighth anniversary of my suicide attempt and brought light to a day that had previously held shame and darkness. TED's support in this effort was incredible; they had extra staff online that weekend and went to great lengths to be sure that if viewers were triggered by the talk, they could be directed to the right resources to get help.

To date my TED talk has over 1.8 million views and has been translated into 39 languages. Many of my students did indeed see it, but I never had to deal with any negative repercussions in or beyond the classroom because of my choice to be vulnerable and transparent. I was reappointed (twice) at the GSB and now hold a senior leadership role at Stanford's Knight-Hennessy Scholars program. It all worked out. I've even started working on my next book dedicated just to this subject. My working title is The Bridge Back to Life: How One Man Came from the Edge of Death to the Center of Life.

My own lived experience sourced my five tips in this section, from checking my motives, seeking the counsel of my husband and advisors, to preparing for the consequences. Over the years, when others come to me and say, “JD, I just don't know that I can share this,” I respond much as Chris Anderson did when I was making my decision: If you're not sure, you may not yet be ready. Check your motives and know why you are disclosing before you attempt to take action. But if you do, be sure you're not doing it for your own self-motivated reasons. Disclose personally for the benefit of others.