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With The Elevator Pitch, Finding Beauty in Simplicity is Key

With nothing but business plan and fund-raising prep on my mind for the past couple weeks, I really enjoyed this article in Inc. Magazine:

You Know What Your Company Does. Can You Explain It in 30 Seconds?

With all honesty, it's hard to strike a balance sometimes between believing that your product is revolutionary and amazing and believing that it can be explained in the requisite 30 seconds.

My first reaction to the endeavor of explaining my company quickly has been to use the 30 seconds to explain why the product can't be explained in 30 seconds, hoping it buys me a minute. In the end, however, it's a terrible solution, and I come away knowing I need to get the explanation down to a shorter form.

As I've taken the last few days on the company's Basecamp writeboard to whittle down the elevator pitch, and as I read through the Inc. article, one thing has really become apparent (not a finalized pitch, unfortunately): the more I embrace the simplicity of my own product, the more simple I can make the pitch. What more, the more simple I can make my pitch, the more elegant the app starts to sound.

Said simply and beautifully, when it comes to elevator pitches there's beauty in simplicity. Embrace it!

About Nate Westheimer

Nate is the Co-Founder and EVP of Product & Technolog for AnyClip. He is also the Organizer of the 13,000 member NY Tech Meetup.