6.7 Unit Summary
6.1 Clarifying Your Vision, Mission, and Goals
The most basic formula for telling the story of your innovation is the problem-solution narrative. Entrepreneurs are problem solvers, but they need to strategize to battle competitors and to weather the risks inherent in starting a new venture. Vision and mission statements are crucial to planning a venture. Vision statements are broader than mission statements. Entrepreneurs can set attainable goals with the help of the SMART goals framework. All of these tools—vision statements, missions, and SMART goal formulation—help build on the venture’s origin story and serve as a general and specific organizing narrative.
6.2 Sharing Your Entrepreneurial Story
This section outlined the importance of conceptualizing and communicating your venture in narrative form. Not every startup venture is a fairy tale, but if you can recognize and apply trusted story formats, you can help establish prominence for your brand, your products, and their specific features. Eventually, your story might be the genesis of a corporate narrative if the startup grows to become one. There are advantages and disadvantages to crafting stories. The advantages are that stories help you communicate the problem your innovation addresses, the solution it offers, and its market need. The disadvantages are that a story can create the fear of missing out in consumers and can set unattainable, rigid goals that can cause you to miss key factors in the venture’s development.
6.3 Developing Pitches for Various Audiences and Goals
A pitch is a request for support, either financial investment or some kind of support. A great pitch takes into account the intended audience and the goal of the talk, and prioritizes information accordingly. In other words, it answers the questions Who? (Who are we pitching?), What? (What are we pitching to them?), and Why? (Why are we pitching: What is the “ask”?). Once you establish these elements, you need to develop a professional pitch deck and include engaging materials that share your passion and communicate your vision. Your pitch should paint a picture of a successful product or service delivering strong returns for investors or for those who choose to work for you or do business with you.
This section offered an outline of elements for a professional pitch deck and provided a few details about what ought to be included. Pitches may vary in length and should take into consideration the demands of contest rules and the quirks of potential investors. That said, there are elements that almost every pitch needs to include, and they are presented in the approximate order in which they might appear in your pitch deck. In general, you should cover all elements of the pitch as outlined here, but the level of detail may vary based on the audience. The entrepreneur should ask the key contact what specific area(s) she should cover so as to make the best impact.
We also discussed crafting different pitches