For Engineers Pitching a Startup: Indecisiveness is Your Enemy

This is a refurbished version of my article originally posted on YES! Delft's blog.

If you want to build a successful startup, you'll inevitably need to become good at pitching. Besides your customers, you'll need to be able to convince co-founders, selection committees, competition juries, investors and other decision-makers... even your loved ones!

In my previous article in the series, we discussed how you can be much more convincing when you talk more about the value of your solution and less about the technology behind.

In this article, I'll explain how you can improve your pitch before you even start preparing it. It's about taking a stance on your key business decisions despite high uncertainty.

Just do it! (Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash)

Guesstimates: Being Right vs Being Fast

In my role as a pitch coach in startup accelerators like YES!Delft, I often hear engineers talk about how their product Can do this, Could do that and how so many things Depend on X and Y. Fair enough, but what decision-makers hear is: "We're afraid to make business decisions because we may be wrong."

Being wrong is ok. Most decision-makers are not your customers; they won't take your words as promises. They understand very well that most of the things you say are nothing more than your assumptions, your educated guesstimates. Your ability to make those guestimates despite high uncertainty is one of the key 'in between the lines' kind of criteria that's rarely made explicit.

But guessing and estimating don't come easy to an engineer - anything less but knowing evokes anxiousness. Why?

Well, many successful engineers and scientists pride themselves with being meticulous, thorough and accurate. I feel you; my educational background is mechanical and industrial design engineering. I recognise this constant fight with the engineering side of my mind that wants to keep analysing and delaying decision making until all stars align perfectly.

When we're deciding on what screws to use on a plane to ensure the perfect balance between safety and weight, this meticulous decision-making approach serves us well. But when we try to become more of an entrepreneur and less of an engineer, we need to become better at making good enough decisions, fast.

Not perfection, but speed is one of the very few advantages that startups have over established corporates. As a startup founder, you're expected to be wrong many times because you move so fast. What a contrast to the engineering and scientific worlds, isn't it?

"Perfect is the enemy of good." - Voltaire

An example, Google Docs

Let's imagine ourselves back in 2006. We have this fantastic idea that is basically Google Docs. We're preparing for an incubation program intake interview where we'll have to pitch our idea. The selection committee is, of course, interested to know about the basics first; what exactly the product is, who it is for and what benefits it provides. Answers to those key business questions are the ingredients of a clear storyline so let's decide what those ingredients for Google Docs are.

The What comes easy; we could say that: "Google Docs is a browser-based document editor." That's a decent, concise product description. But customers don't care about the product, they care about the value it provides.

So what value does a browser-based document editor provide to its users? Brain farts that come to mind: you don't need to install anything, it works on all operating systems (Win/Mac/Linux), it's free, you don't lose your documents if your computer breaks down, it's very easy to use, you don't need to send document edits back and forth with your colleagues, it allows you to work on a document with multiple people at the same time... There's for sure many more that we could come up with.

In your pitch, it might be tempting to unload 10+ benefits of your product, but that might not be the best idea. It's your job as an entrepreneur to figure out what key benefit will make the majority of your customers choose your product, You are expected to make a guesstimate. After all, you're (becoming) an expert in what your customers need, it's essential that you demonstrate that. Ideally, you should be able to provide at least some evidence to support the reasoning behind your guesstimates (validation), but at the very least, you make an educated guess.

Back to our Google Docs example. We could guess that the most valuable benefit for the majority of users is most likely the ability to collaborate with multiple remote people, on the same document, at the same time. Sounds good enough to me. The decision has been made, and it is considered true until proven otherwise.

Conclusion

Making a guesstimate on the key benefit of a product, like an example above, is only one of many business decisions that you'll need to take a stance on if you want your pitch to be sharp.

Remember that most of your decisions at this early startup stage are not set in stone. Keep seeing them as taking a stance, as picking your favourites or as making educated guesses that need to be confirmed or rejected through validation.

In the upcoming articles, we'll discuss how to connect your guesstimates into a clear storyline that excites people. If you don't want to miss it, let's connect! Until then, see if my self-explanatory canvasses can guide you in crafting your pitch. You can download them for free, no email required, from my website: pitchblocks.com