The day · Page 52
Pitching for a decision, not for money
For you only
Every team pitches. No exceptions. Ten minutes each: five to show and explain, five of questions from the judges. Pitch in the open, in front of everyone, not in a side room. People should hear how each other think. It is good practice for all of us, because whatever our titles, few of us are good at selling our own work, and this is a safe place to get better at it.
For the craft of the pitch itself, I lean on Jenny Lindblad, and I want to introduce her properly, because her material shaped this whole chapter. Jenny has coached more than a thousand startups on pitching across seventeen years, and she has delivered thousands of presentations herself, including five years at Ericsson pitching to boards, governments, and investors. Her weekly newsletter, Pitching Made Simple, is short, practical, and free at jennylindblad.com. I recommended her in my articles before this book, and I will keep doing it: follow her before you run your first day.
One adaptation, and it matters. Jenny coaches founders who pitch investors for money. Your teams pitch leadership for a decision. Same skill, different ask, and in one way your teams have it easier: the judges are already in the room, already briefed, and already want to say yes to something today. In another way it is harder: your presenters had fifteen minutes to prepare, not fifteen weeks. Everything on the next pages is her thinking, resized for that.
The mindset shift to hand your teams before anything else, borrowed from how Jenny reframes the pitch: a pitch is not a report. Nobody in that room needs a complete account of your six hours. A pitch transfers belief: that the problem is real, that your prototype found something true about it, and that a decision is ready to be made. Report the day and the judges get information. Transfer belief and they get a reason to decide.