3 Passes on How to Make a Better Pitch
Transcript
Hey everybody, I'm Mark Achler with MATH Venture Partners.
And for years, I have been coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs.
And every year, we get dozens and dozens, hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs pitching us.
And as I coach and mentor, the question always comes up, how can I make my presentation better?
And I don't know, you know, there's so much material out there.
There are no shortage of books and articles and videos of everybody has their methodology of how to make a great presentation.
And I always thought, well, what could I add to that?
but over the summer I kind of had a little bit of a revelation and an aha moment in terms of what
makes a great presentation and I came up with this framework that I call three passes.
The three passes are essence, empathy, and emotion and so here's what I recommend to entrepreneurs now.
Go read all the books. Go watch the videos. Listen to the podcasts. Listen to your mentors.
Go create your presentation and get it all out of your system. Do whatever they tell you to do.
Put it all down. Go create your magnus opus, your great presentation.
Now that you've got that out of your system, I want you to go through your presentation three times.
The first time, the first E is essence.
Not all facts are created equal.
Most entrepreneurs, when they give a presentation, they go fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact,
fact, because they think that gives you credibility.
But it's not good storytelling.
And the truth of the matter is, you know, us VCs, we hear so many pitches.
Like there's limited bandwidth up here.
What I want you to do is stack, rank, and prioritize.
Take all those facts that you put down in your presentation.
Stack, rank them.
Pick the top three, the top four.
There's no magic number. Think in headlines. If there's three things that you want your audience
to remember, what are those three things? Everything else is noise and it goes into an
appendix. And remember, the goal of a first meeting is to get to the second meeting.
And if somebody wants to dive deep and really get into the detail, great, fantastic.
But in the beginning, get it down to the essence. That's the first pass. And go through and strip
out everything that's extraneous. The second pass is empathy. And this is really hard.
Because it's not about you. It's about, if you're pitching, it's about the person sitting across the
table from you, who are they? How do they think? If they're a VC, what's their investment thesis?
How do they make decisions? What's the inner dialogue inside of their mind? What questions
are they asking? And I want you to go through your presentation, not from your point of view,
but from the point of view of your audience, from the point of view of the VC. And are you
answering the questions that they care most about. Because remember, it's not about you,
it's about them. And in order to do that, that means you really got to do a lot of homework.
You have to understand the VC. You got to go talk to them or talk to the CEOs who are in their
portfolio companies. How do they do it? What do they care about? You know, at MATH Venture Partners,
we care in so much about this that we ended up writing a founder's checklist. We put everything
that you need to know before you come to meet with us. What is our investment thesis? What's
our history? What's our process? What kind of questions are we going to ask you? It's all up
there. That information's there. Do your homework. Have empathy. That's the second E. The third E
is the hardest of all, and that's emotion.
And I know most entrepreneurs, oftentimes you might be technical
or you might be financial, and it's like emotion.
What are you talking about?
Why should there be emotion?
But great storytellers know that it's the emotion
that get people to take an action,
that move the soul. And so I like to use the example, every single presentation has a team
slide. So why? Like the team slide, you have your name and your background. You used to work X, Y,
and Z, and you have these skills. And here's your co-founders and who they are. And so I ask,
like why do you have a team slide and what's the emotion you're trying to elicit and most
entrepreneurs say well credibility we want people to think we're credible but that's not the emotion
the emotion is trust you want them to trust you you say oh they used to work at google or microsoft
or Amazon or some big company, they have the domain expertise, they have the technical skills,
they have the experience, you can trust us, give us your money because we will be able to execute.
And so I want you to go through each one of your slides and be thoughtful and intentional
about what emotion you want somebody to feel. Do you want them to be excited? Do you want them to
have FOMO, fear of missing out? Do you want them to feel greed? Do you want them to feel smart?
Oh, like they found something before anybody else or they're on trend. Emotion. So that's it.
It's really, really hard, but three passes. Essence, simplify. Empathy, answer the questions
from the point of view of your audience, and most importantly, emotion, tell a fantastic story.
And if you do that, I promise you, you will have a better presentation and better results. Thanks.
Mark Achler shares valuable advice on enhancing your pitch. With a wealth of experience and countless pitches under his belt, he addresses a common question that founders often ask: “How can I make my pitch better?” Mark introduces a practical framework called “3 Passes,” which consists of three key elements: Essence, Empathy, and Emotion.
Mark’s approach goes beyond the standard textbook pitch deck. It emphasizes the art of crafting a compelling narrative that combines the essence of your pitch with empathy for your audience and the emotional elements that make your message truly resonate.
In this video, you’ll gain valuable insights into how to make your pitch not only better but also more persuasive and impactful by applying the 3 Passes framework. It’s a must-watch for anyone looking to refine their pitching skills and effectively convey their vision to investors, stakeholders, or potential partners.
Originally published on the MATH Venture Partners blog.