If your elevator pitch is a hyper-compressed two-minute overview of your hopes, dreams and the thing you’ve been building for the last three years, you’re doing everyone a disservice. I’ll never be able to see the future through your eyes this quickly, and worse, if you’ve told me what I need to know to be able to easily say no, I’ll say no.
The best elevator pitch doesn’t pitch your project. It pitches the meeting about your project. The best elevator pitch is true, stunning, brief and it leaves the listener eager (no, desperate) to hear the rest of it. It’s not a practiced, polished turd of prose that pleases everyone on the board and your marketing team, it’s a little fractal of the entire story, something real.
“I quit my job as an Emmy-winning actress to do this because…” or “Our company is profitable and has grown 10% per week, every week, since July,” or “The King of Spain called me last week about the new project we just launched.”
More conversations and fewer announcements.