The One-Minute Pitch

The disqualification gate

Investors don't add a pitch up. In the study this is built on, covering 150 televised pitches and 750 investor interactions, every pitch that carried one fatal flaw was rejected, 134 out of 134, and every pitch without one advanced. Listeners look for a reason to stop, so a one-minute pitch first has to avoid giving them one.

For a pitch in The Office (sixty to ninety seconds, invited, an ask permitted) the gate has four bars: no stated claim, meaning nothing a listener could agree or disagree with; no evidence for the central claim, where the thing the pitch rests on is asserted and never shown; no ask, where the room permitted one and none was made; and no founder-market fit, where nothing says why this person, of all people. Longer, invited formats add a fifth: the competitive set unnamed. "We have no competitors" is that failure said aloud.

If a pitch trips the gate, TOM says so before the score, and the score is capped, because a pitch the listener would have turned down shouldn't score well on points alone.

The twelve dimensions

After the gate, a one-minute pitch is scored on twelve things, each from the text alone, each weighted for the listener in front of you.

1. One claim. Did one idea run the whole way through, or did it change shape?
2. Concrete image. Is there one thing a listener could picture and repeat?
3. Image discipline. Having found it, was it used, or abandoned after one line?
4. Evidence. Proof, or only adjectives? Named, checkable, specific.
5. Claim hygiene. Any claim that would fail a first check? Each one discounts everything else.
6. Compression. Three phrases doing one phrase's work?
7. The ask. Does the listener know what you want from them?
8. Length. Did it land inside the window, and stop cleanly?
9. First five seconds. Does the opening make them want to hear the rest?
10. Last five seconds. Does the ending invite a next step?
11. Audience fit. Did it answer the question this room is actually asking?
12. Survivability. Would it stand up if the listener went and checked one thing?

Beneath the twelve sit eighty finer checks, covering what each kind of listener is documented to screen for, and what the research on being believed supports: specific numbers rather than round ones, concrete language rather than abstract adjectives, no undefined jargon, no low-likelihood hedges on the central claim, confidence calibrated to evidence, moderate positivity rather than hype, the obvious objection raised and answered. Each carries an evidence grade, which says how strong the research behind it is.

The three rooms

The same idea has to work in three very different settings, and most pitch training prepares you for one. The rules change with whether you were invited and what the other person can do when they've heard enough.

Two further rooms exist for people who were invited and are being ranked or interrupted: the slot (two to three minutes, a competition) and the meeting (five minutes and up, they cut across you). They carry their own rubrics, because the discipline at five minutes is the opposite of the discipline at fifteen seconds.

Elevator pitch versus one-minute pitch

"Elevator pitch" is one of the most borrowed phrases in business advice, though few pitches really happen in a lift. The constraint it describes is real (unplanned, no slides, an easy exit), and here it's called the corridor, because a corridor is where it really happens. A one-minute pitch is the longer, invited form, which TOM calls The Office. The mistake most people make is to have only one of them, and to use it in both places. A corridor pitch in the office sounds thin, and an office pitch in a corridor loses the listener in about twenty seconds.

What is not scored, and why

Your face, voice, accent, confidence and clothes aren't scored. They can't be measured reliably, inferring them is restricted by law in some places, and the research on eye contact and posture points the wrong way. Your ums aren't counted either, because we have found no study showing that filler words cost anyone money. Passion isn't rewarded: displayed enthusiasm brings in money in crowdfunding but not from professional investors, and the teams funded for it do worse afterwards. A one-minute pitch is scored on what was said. We chose that because it doesn't depend on how you look or sound.

Questions

How many words is a one-minute pitch?

About 130 to 160 words at a normal speaking pace. The window for the room is sixty to ninety seconds; the corridor is about thirty words.

Should a one-minute pitch have an ask?

In The Office, yes, and an Office pitch without one is ruled out. In the corridor and at the dinner, no: the ask is the question the listener puts to you.

Is a number better than an adjective?

Almost always. In a study of 213,510 requests for money, specific numbers had the largest positive effect of any kind of language. Two or three significant figures; hyper-precision reads as bluff to an expert.

Does the same pitch score the same for every listener?

No. An angel, a venture fund, a private-equity buyer, a corporate, a family office and your own family are each answering a different question, so the twelve dimensions are weighted differently for each, and the eighty checks change with the room.

Can I get my pitch read?

Yes. Your first read is free: make an account, then say your sixty seconds and TOM reads it.