An elevator pitch is a short, persuasive speech that is used to quickly and simply explain a product, service, or idea. It is called an "elevator pitch" because it is supposed to be the length of a short elevator ride, typically about 30 seconds to two minutes, and should be able to be delivered to a potential investor, customer, or client in the time it takes to ride an elevator.
An elevator pitch is like a commercial for a product, service, or idea.
Just like how a commercial is a short, persuasive message that is used to quickly and simply explain the benefits of a product and persuade the viewer to take some action, such as buying the product or trying it out, an elevator pitch is a short, persuasive message that is used to quickly and simply explain the key points of an idea and persuade the listener to take some action, such as investing in a product or service, trying out a new idea, or considering a proposal.
Like a commercial, an elevator pitch should be engaging, compelling, and to the point, and it should be able to effectively communicate the key points of the idea in a short amount of time.
An elevator pitch is how you communicate your product, service, or idea in a concise 30-60 second pitch.
It's one thing to know what an elevator pitch is, but that is worthless if you don't know why you should know what an elevator pitch is in the first place. Let's break down the importance of this tech term based on two high level categories. We'll walk through an explanation as well as provide a score, 1-10, that shows you how much you should care about an elevator pitch.
The first will be if you do not have a product yet. This means that you don't have a physical product. Maybe you're in the ideation phase, or maybe you're almost ready to start development. Whichever it is, we'll get into why an elevator pitch is important and why you should or shouldn't care about it if you do not have a product.
An elevator pitch is incredibly important regardless if you have a product or not. Your pitch is how you succinctly describe what you are working on, so it is important that you can articulate this clearly.
The second category is if you do have a live product. Maybe you just launched your business or maybe it's been live for years and you're continuing to improve its quality. Regardless of the scenario, if your product is live, an elevator pitch carries a different weight.
If you have a product, your elevator pitch is still incredibly important because it will be how you communicate your product to potential investors, customers, etc.
So you know what an elevator pitch is, by definition. You know if you should care about it or not depending on your situation as a business/company/product. To dig in deeper, we will walk through some examples so we can make sure you really have a solid grasp on an elevator pitch.
We're going to walk through three example elevator pitches: