By If you cannot pitch your company in ninety seconds, you do not yet understand your company. That sounds harsh and I mean it gently, because the ninety second pitch is not a party trick, it is a diagnosis. When a founder can lay out what they do, for whom, why now and why them, cleanly, in a minute and a half, it is proof the thinking underneath is clear. When it takes ten rambling minutes to get to the point, the rambling is the tell. Confusion in the pitch is confusion in the head.
You will need this more often than the full deck. The investor you catch in a corridor. The one sitting next to you at an event who asks what you do. The first thirty seconds of a formal meeting before you have even opened the laptop. In every one of those moments the full pitch is useless and the ninety second version is everything and the founders who have it ready walk away from chance encounters with meetings, while the ones who fumble walk away with a polite nod.
What has to fit in ninety seconds
A good ninety second pitch is not a compressed deck, it is the spine of it. The problem, made concrete enough to feel. What you do about it, in one plain line. Why this works now and not before. Why you are the ones to do it. And where you are, a shred of traction and what you want. That is the whole company and if all of it fits in ninety seconds it is because you finally know which parts are the spine and which parts were just padding.
Where the ninety seconds go
- 22% The problem
- 28% What you do
- 28% Why now, why you
- 22% Traction and the ask
Cutting is the real work
Getting there is painful because it is all cutting and everything you cut felt important. The clever technical detail. The second use case. The nuance you love. Out, all of it, because ninety seconds has room only for the spine and the discipline of deciding what makes the cut is exactly the discipline that clarifies your own understanding of the business. Founders often tell me the ninety second version taught them what their company actually was, because it forced them to choose.
From ramble to ninety seconds
- 1Write it long
Everything you would say with unlimited time.
- 2Cut to the spine
Problem, what you do, why now, why you, traction and the ask.
- 3Say it out loud
Time it. Cut again where it runs over.
- 4Rehearse it
Until it sounds like you in a corridor, not a recital.
Rehearse it until it is yours
Then rehearse it until it sounds like you and not like a memorised paragraph, until you can deliver it relaxed, in a corridor, without notes and have it feel like a person talking rather than a pitch being recited. Because the moments you will use it are unplanned and a ninety second pitch that only works when you are prepared is a ninety second pitch you do not really have. Get it into your bones, so it is there when the chance arrives, which is usually when you least expect it.
So write it, cut it to the spine and practise it until it is effortless. It will make every full pitch sharper, because a deck built on a clear ninety second spine is a clear deck. And it will catch the opportunities the full pitch never could, the ones in corridors and lifts and the seat beside you, where the whole game is whether you can make someone care in a minute and a half.