The Art of Pitching

Ben Gilbert (0:00)

You know, David, I like, I think I mentioned at the beginning of the last episode, but I like the foam padding room you're in.

David Rosenthal (0:10)

This room is such a mess. This is the, we're coming at you live on the Acquired LP Show from our very much work in progress recording studio, acquired recording studio in the Wave office in San Francisco.

Ben Gilbert (0:25)

It may be a mess, but it's a mess with sound absorbing. You got like some kind of cushion there and some apparel.

David Rosenthal (0:33)

Yeah, some acquired t-shirts are absorbing sound here in the booth.

Ben Gilbert (0:40)

I'm in a conference room at PSL and I need to get some, I mean, we got like a wooden table and concrete and it's time to pad the walls.

David Rosenthal (0:51)

Seriously, you guys need to upgrade.

Ben Gilbert (0:53)

I know, we need to make, talk to your partners. Remember those like high school band rooms that like have all the stuff all over the way. We need to get some of those tiles.

Or Geekwire has a great studio. When I was doing the Geekwire podcast, it's like just John's office, but he has a like velvet track curtain like stage curtain that he like brings around and then you're enclosed in like this, you know, you talk and you can't hear your voice bounce off anything and it's very strange. It's really nice though.

David Rosenthal (1:25)

Is it purple velvet?

Ben Gilbert (1:26)

I don't know. I don't know.

All right, LPs, what's going on? Thank you for joining us today. We have a topic that David and I have been kicking around doing in some capacity for a long time and like many other things on the LP show, now we finally have an outlet to do it. And it's a thing that David and I think about all the time, both on how to perform one and then how also to sort of sit back and smile and know that you're being pitched in an amazing way, but as the art of the pitch and how to tell an amazing story for your startup.

David Rosenthal (2:05)

Yeah, and specifically, I think we wanted to dig into a seed stage pitch, which there are certainly common elements to pitching your startup for, well really for pitching for anything, fundraising, potential hires, partners, what have you, but there are common elements at all stages, but seed is both of our specific area of expertise and probably of interest to many of you all as well.

Ben Gilbert (2:37)

And a lot of this is transferable, but we'll be anchored in the seed pitch. And to further illustrate how it's transferable, we had an awesome talk by Chris Capicella last night, who's the CMO of Microsoft. He came to the PSL office and was chatting with us. And he was talking, I mean, he talked a little bit about the stock price, though he was very reticent to do so, because in his words, in the minute that I've talked to you about this, I've already discussed it more with you guys than we pay attention to it as a senior leadership team. It is the least important metric that we track. And so I just thought, you know, that's good discipline right there.

But he was talking a lot about how, as a marketing organization, over the last five years, they've really been telling the story, both to the market and to customers, about sort of the cloud transition to the future. And it's fascinating to see, like, the public markets are valuing Microsoft differently because of the story they're telling.

If they're doing that for Microsoft, a 40 whatever, 45 year old company, like then the storytelling never ends. Like, your positioning is always, always, always important.

David Rosenthal (3:50)

Yeah, it's funny that I hadn't even thought about that as we were thinking about this episode, but that just jogged my mind of what might be, I think, the most important advice for fundraising at any stage of your company, even a public company like Microsoft, which goes back to our Amazon IPO episode. And I think, you know, Jeff Bezos delivered through Tom Alberg's advice is the best. You get the investors you ask for, and like that is so, so, so true.

And it's worth at the start of any fundraising journey, thinking about who, thinking hard about who the investors are that you want, and then asking for those investors and tailoring what you do, you know, around them. Because if you don't do that, you end up with whatever you can get, and that's not a good situation to be in.