I caught the subway down to wall st. today to meet with an up and coming niche content site, DramaFever.com.  I arrived a little early to this fancy coffee shop called the “financier”.  It was like Starbucks with a french twist.  I didn’t really want anything they had on their menu, but it seemed i had a few minutes to wait, and I didn’t want to just appear like some bum taking a breather in their sitting area, so I got an ice coffee.  For some reason i thought it was going to taste like the iced coffee or thai tea I used to have back in my Univ of Michigan days, but i was quite wrong.  It tasted terrible, its apparent I’m not a coffee drinker on any level.  Just as I was going for another gut wrenching sip, I was in luck, the Drama fever crew had arrived and I could just let the cup sit as decoration.

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I don’t think we’ve covered this topic yet on the blog, but I figure there is no better time than now.  Recently we’ve had the chance to go out and spread the word about Motown.  In general we’ve been well received but, depending on the execution, the all important elevator pitch has garnered different degrees of curiosity.

The first time I found myself pitching the idea, it turned into a 5mins spiel, at the end of which the people in front of me still didn’t completely understand the business.  Now I could easily answer their questions and describe the products value to their application, but the only I was only able to carry such a long conversation due to my environment. In this particular situation I was amongst people genuinely interested in broadband video.  However, I won’t always be so lucky to have that audience. One of the people I was talking to was kinda enough to notice that I need help with the elevator pitch. So he gave me a chance to sit down with him and just throw 6 liners at him.   To be honest, I still don’t think we have the elevator pitch as concise as it should be, but with a little more help and experience we’ll be all set to go.  For anyone looking to learn the art of the elevator pitch, I recommend Venture Hacks, check out this blog entry from them.

The elevator pitch is important for any company that is in the midst of VC introductions.  You really need a concise message, I’d say 180 characters or less, that can deliver impactful insight about your said venture.  It’s how you get your foot in the door.  We’ve been lucky enough at this point to already have our foot in the door, and thus we jumped straight into the Deck Pitch (I guess i’ll write on that later as well). Nonetheless, until we have the appropriate funding in hand, I want to have all my tools in order to execute on a pitch.