A Million Dollar Pitch: breaking down the initial business pitch that worked.
Part 1.
You know, one of the most common questions I get in life is “How do you get certain people to talk to you?”
By “certain people”, they mean people of high business/social standing that are uneasy to get to. And yet, even though the odds are usually stacked against me — I somehow manage to get attention: whether it is from an investor, a pretty woman, a high-profile businessman, or an awesome guest on my new podcast, called “BE Yourself”.
The short answer is: be naive, creative and persistent. But let me unpack.
July 2017, my Initial Pitch to the Person who later Became our Investor, pouring more than $500k into our business during the next 4 years:
This was about 3 months into unsuccessful attempts me and my co-founder Eugene took in the summer of 2017, when we made a deal that if we don’t find anyone by the end of the summer — we’d capitulate.
Lesson #1: persist, if you said you are going to try X times — keep the promise. If you were ignored — Write Again.
As you can see here, once I got accepted by Vladimir on LinkedIn — I sent a more comprehensive pitch, using the article on a popular Ukrainian business media to back up my words.
Lesson #2: Show creativity, use any tools you have to validate your idea/market/industry.
Lesson #3: know who you are pitching to. Understand what the person likes.
In this particular case, I was reading Vladimir’s blog, therefore I knew which words to use, i.e. “systematic”, “strategic”, and “not start-ups”.
After this, we proceeded to meet with the business analyst who was our first point of contact — Vladislav (big Kudos to Vladislav=). The rest of the story is in parts 2 & 3.
