A successful pitch

The company has a fascinating origin story and you can find out more about the company and its values on the Airbnb webpage

Some examples

Airbnb’s elevator pitch might be:

• Most tourists booking online care about price – and hotels are one of the highest costs when travelling.
• On the other hand, platforms like Couchsurfing have proven that over half a million people are willing to lend their couches or spare bedrooms.
• We have created a platform that connects travellers with locals, letting them rent out rooms, or even entire places. Travellers save money, and locals can monetise their empty rooms – we just take a 10% commission.

How does that sound?

The source with more information on elevator pitches, and more examples, can be found at Slidebean

There’s a lot of information contained within the four paragraphs above. This example pitch has: a clearly articulated offering, the problems it solves for customers, the value Airbnb provides, validation (by citing other firms in the same sector – Couchsurfing) and, more importantly, an ask.

Two critical components of a successful pitch are:

• An opening hook – that gets the audience’s attention. One good approach could be to use a question.
• An ask or call to action – a clear request at the end of the pitch. The above example could be even stronger if it finished with something like, ‘and we are seeking a £50,000 investment to make this happen. Is this something you are interested in exploring further?’.

This video explains further

In the next step, we’ll put some of this into practice!