Hot Seat

Chapter 13. The Pyramid Pitch

Everyone knows of the mythical elevator pitch. You find yourself in an elevator, rocketing toward the penthouse suite of a downtown office edifice, when you realize that the person standing next to you is a powerful and influential investor. She asks what you do, and you calmly deliver your pitch. Just a sentence or two, properly chosen. The doors open, the conversation continues, the financing comes together, and happiness is at hand.

I’m here to tell you that the elevator is real. While you may not be trapped in a small ascending room, the potent entrepreneur’s life is full of inflection moments: brief opportunities to shift the destiny of your company. And a proper pitch is essential to take advantage of them. But contrary to what you might have heard, the solution isn’t the 60-second elevator pitch. In fact, the elevator pitch is only a simple, basic example of a much more powerful tool: the pyramid pitch.

The pyramid pitch is based on a simple and fundamental principle: startups are driven by randomness and chaos. Sometimes this is obvious, as in the elevator case. Other times the situation appears controlled—for example, when you have five minutes allocated to speak at a pitch event. But minds wander, distractions beckon, bladders fill... if you don’t grab your audience immediately, you may never get them back.

The pyramid pitch draws its name from Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy. Maslow postulated that humans had many “needs,” but some were ...