Recently over at REbound we had yet another experience where we were told that we needed to make a <5 minute pitch. I have written about this idiotic carry-over from the tech world a few times, but I wanted to take this opportunity to dedicate a full post to the topic.
Now, its important early on to define what I mean by pitch because some people call any presentation a pitch, and that is confusing. To us, a pitch means a short <30min presentation that is given explicitly so that investors (or members of the public unlucky enough to be subjected to it) can make a quick up or down decision on weather they want to hear more. The idea being that these people are so busy being bombarded with other pitches, that you have to make your idea stick with a grand slam 3 minute pitch.
For the savvy cleantech entrepreneur, pitches are rather benign. It takes a lot of time, but eventually you will make a pitch presentation that is sufficiently impressive to get you to a longer meeting. At REbound we have dedicated a huge amount of time to our pitch and the way people are first introduced to our system. We have learned through many failed attempts, that people just don't want to learn about a technology in a pitch. They want to know what you are replacing, how much better your system is, and how big the market is for the thing you are replacing. It is very clear that a "proper" pitch has almost no technical discussion.
