During the past week, our class developed, delivered and listened to elevator pitches about our business ideas. According to past students, it was the scariest part of the whole class (besides the longer presentation at the end of the semester). There were stories of students having to stop in the middle of their pitches and leave the room before delivering it for the second time. I thought, “Really? You’re only talking for a minute.”
After the fact, I took away two thoughts from the experience:
1. Writing an elevator pitch is hard.
I’ve pitched story ideas informally, but I’ve never done a formal elevator pitch. When I first sat down to write it, I realized I hadn’t thought enough about who are market was, how the app worked, what information it was going to provide and how sustainable it would be in the Omaha area. It helped to research and sit down with my group to really think it through.
An elevator pitch is delivered in the time it takes to go up an elevator.
I had never written a 60 second speech before, and I had no idea how to go about it. I tried doing a message map, which only helped a little. I ended up watching the University of Dayton’s winning elevator pitch in 2013, and modeled my pitch after Aaron Pugh’s “Hot Seat” elevator pitch.
After writing a draft using that model, I timed myself while reading the pitch. It was only 50 seconds long. Our minimum was 60 seconds, so I had to add more information without making the pitch too complicated. 60 seconds seems short, but you can fit a lot of information into 60 seconds.
2. I became more aware of my speech habits during this experience.
I’m good with words when they involve being written down, but using them to talk is a different story. Before coming to class, I had practiced my pitch six or seven times. We had time to practice in our groups, and my partners unfortunately didn’t seem as ready as I was, so that was a confidence booster for me. As I was delivering my talk, I was happy with my eye contact and my lack of using “umm.” I was surprised I never needed the filler; I’ve used it in other speeches before. Instead, if I forgot a word, I just paused for a millisecond until I remembered it, and moved on. I did talk rather fast, probably because of the nerves and the thought that I only had 60 seconds to talk in the back of my head. That’s still something I have to work on.
Overall, I was impressed with my class’ effort. Many of them seemed relaxed and poised. I was also happy to hear their ideas; most of them sound really cool! I look forward to learning more during our final presentations at the end of the semester.
Madeline Zukowski 
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