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The Best Startup Pitches
Startup Pitches ain’t easy. Even the most confident startup founder gets nervous pitching their idea to that big investor. And although advice on pitching and presentation is helpful, sometimes you need to take a look at some startup pitch examples to really get that inspiration and confidence flowing. Well, we’ve got you covered. In this post we’ll talk you through twenty of the best startup pitches of all time, and what you can learn from them.
Startup Pitches & Presentations
1. Evernote
Elevator startup pitches are an invaluable part of your pitching arsenal. If you’re a founder, you’re going to get asked what your company does – and you’re going to get asked a lot. You don’t want to get caught off-guard every time this happens. Prepare and practice an elevator pitch. This is a short explanation of what you do that shouldn’t last more than a minute.
In this video, former CEO Phil Libin makes a fantastic elevator pitch for Evernote. To put it frankly, if you can pack this much compelling information into less than a minute, you’re smashing it. So watch and learn.
2. M14 Industries
You might have seen M14 Industries founder John Kershaw winning at Dragon’s Den recently. This pitch last year at Tech North shows it definitely wasn’t a fluke. This pitch fits into a strict three-minute time limit and shows exactly where M14 fits into the wider dating app market. Plus, John’s humor really shines through. When you’re pitching your product, you really want to inject some personality into it. After all, investors are often looking more closely at the founders and the team than they are at the product.
3. Twoodo
Although sadly they shut down as of January this year, Twoodo’s founder David Arnoux has been widely acclaimed for this pitch back in 2013.
What we love about this pitch is how succinctly and simply he demos the app and really showcases its features.
By the time he tells you Twoodo’s core goal – ‘actionable conversations‘ – you’ve already seen how they do this.
4. Loopt
Now the President of Y Combinator and one of the most influential startup investors, it’s no surprise that Sam Altman’s pitch for Loopt in 2008 is phenomenal. He founded the company aged just 19, and it was eventually acquired by Green Dot Corporation for a staggering $43.4 million. Before that, they raised $30 million in venture capital. So pay attention to this pitch!
5. Bizimply
Bizimply won the International BETA PITCH competition at Web Summit 2015 with this fantastic pitch from co-founder Mikey Cannon. He really shows the problems in work scheduling and then demonstrates how they solve them. Plus, he validates the market really well, without making the stats seem boring (which takes skill!)
6. Jukedeck
Although we wouldn’t necessarily suggest this approach for most startup pitches, Jukedeck is certainly winning on courage and delivery in this unique pitch. Might be time to start practicing your rapping…
7. Keen
This is a wonderful story-telling style pitch from Keen CEO Ryan Spraetz. This is a really engaging way to pitch a product. Especially given that data analytics might seem a bit dry to the average person.
8. Levi Roots
One of the most successful Dragon’s Den businesses to date, Levi Roots is now believed to be worth $30 million! Who doesn’t like being serenaded for an investment? Warning: you’re going to be hungry after this one.
9. Mowdo
Calling themselves the ‘Uber of Lawn Care’, Mike Findago pitches his lawn care on-demand app in this video. He explains that it’s America’s number 1 most hated task, and this is one very easy way to get it off your to-do list. Plus, he shows off some pretty promising figures, with the average customer paying $45 per mow twice a month! This really shows how helpful it is to validate your market before pitching. If you’ve already got paying customers, you’ve got social proof.
10. Twilio
One way to prove something works as intended is to get it to do something that everyone in the audience can see on their phones! Making startup pitches interactive is a fantastic way to keep your audience engaged.
11. Klash
Pitching a truth or dare style app whilst wearing a mankini is certainly one way to demonstrate your product’s USP! He’s demoing a dare “Pitch in a Borat mankini” and he quite rightly comments: “Klash is fun. Sometimes embarrassing.”
12. Sendgrid
Go to 15:50 to see the start of SendGrid founder Isaac Saldana’s pitch. Even though he’s a little nervous, his pitch definitely deserves to be on this best startup pitches list.
As Ethan Kurzweil explains in this video, despite SendGrid being a massively technical product, Saldana explains in the very first minute of his pitch why what he’s doing is different and why it matters. He avoids focusing too much on the fine technical details that his audience might not necessarily understand.
Plus he’s sharing the social proof that he has 100 paying customers (and it’s probably no surprise they have a lot more than that nowadays).
13. Yext
Yext did an amazing job at TechCrunch50 at pitching their pay-per-call local business advertising model. Plus, his live demo really shows off all the key features of the product! And we get the line: “you asked me to call about a Porsche, even though this is a startup conference.”
14. Admob
Given that AdMob was eventually acquired by Google for $750 million, this is well worth a watch. You can see Omar Hamoui convincingly predict just how important mobile would become.
15. CupAd
Another fantastic and very convincing elevator pitch, this time from the co-founder of CupAd Josh Light.
16. Hungry House
Back in 2007, this idea was way ahead of the game. And although their deal with Caan and Bannatyne fell through at due diligence, Hungry House’s founders did impress the general public. They’re now a big household name.
17. ZocDoc
Founder Cyrus Massoumi takes the storytelling approach in this pitch and demonstrates the need for ZocDoc’s product. This pitch really helped them put their mark on the map.
18. Lifesaver
By explaining the stats behind clean drinking water, Michael Pritchard really focuses on the scale of the problem. In contrast, his solution seems simple and innovative, most of the best startup pitches emphasize a tacit need for the product and themselves as the solution
19. Vizify
Founder Todd Silverstein gets the audience on board with a few laughs, before diving into exactly how his product will solve the problem at hand. Vizify was eventually acquired by Yahoo, so the founders were doing something right!
20. Next Big Sound
“We all know the music industry’s in a state of unprecedented change.” With soundbites like this, Alex White really drives home the pain points that Next Big Sound will cure.
We hope you enjoyed the best startup pitches! For more on pitch deck design & creation, read more on our blog.
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