Pitch
A pitch is a short, persuasive presentation of an idea, a product or yourself, with one goal: making the other person want to keep talking. Pitching is doing exactly that, usually in a few minutes and often without slides.
Three minutes is nothing. It is shorter than the average song. And yet it is the format in which many decisions are made. The moment at the table before the agenda starts. The round with an investor. The five minutes you get in the management meeting. The chat at the coffee machine with someone you have been trying to reach for months.
The mistake almost everyone makes: squeezing a thirty-minute presentation into three. It doesn't work. A short pitch is not a shortened presentation. It is a different kind of story, with a different goal.
In this article: what that goal is, which structure works, a worked example, and what does and doesn't belong on your screen.
What is a pitch?
A pitch presents your idea, product or yourself in a way that makes the other person want something. Usually not a signature right away, but a follow-up.
That is the most important insight in this article: a pitch doesn't sell the product, a pitch sells the next conversation. Once you accept that, half of your content falls away. You don't have to be complete, and you don't have to anticipate every objection. You only have to make the other person curious enough to want to continue.
There are roughly four kinds:
Elevator pitch: 30 to 60 seconds. Goal: you are remembered and they ask questions.
Pitch at the table: 2 to 3 minutes. Goal: a follow-up meeting.
Investor pitch: 5 to 10 minutes. Goal: the next meeting or due diligence.
New business or tender pitch: 20 to 45 minutes. Goal: the shortlist, or the contract.
This article is about the second one: the two-to-three-minute pitch. It is the format you will find yourself in most often, and the one most people prepare for worst.
Three minutes means one idea
Do the maths. In three minutes you speak roughly 400 to 450 words. That is a page and a half, out loud.
That leaves room for one idea. Not three key messages, not five USPs, not your entire proposition. One.
The exercise that fixes this: write down what the other person should be able to tell a colleague afterwards. In one sentence. If you can't, you don't have a pitch, you have a summary. And summaries don't stick.
The structure that works
Five parts, in this order. The timings are a guide, but the proportions hold.
1. The hook (15 seconds). Don't start with your name and your company. That is information, not attention. Start with something the other person recognises or is surprised by: an observation from their world, a number that hurts, a question they have asked themselves before.
Weak: "Good afternoon, I'm Sanne from Kade and we make software for healthcare."
Better: "On this ward, a nurse spends a third of every shift on paperwork. Not on patients."
2. The problem (30 seconds). Make it sharp, and make it theirs. Not "the market needs", but what it costs your listener or their customers: time, money, risk, missed opportunities. One concrete example is worth more than three abstract statements.
3. Your solution (45 seconds). Only now. What do you do, for whom, and why is that different from what already exists? In plain language. If you can't explain it without jargon, your pitch isn't finished. Test: could someone outside your field repeat it? If not, simplify.
4. The proof (45 seconds). This is the part that gets skipped most often and delivers the most. Why should the other person believe you? Customers, results, a pilot that is running, a team that has done this before. One strong piece of proof beats four weak ones. Without proof, your pitch is an opinion.
5. The ask (15 seconds). End with what you want. Concrete, and small enough to say yes to. "I'd like half an hour with your product manager" is a good ask. "Let me know if this is interesting" is not an ask, it is a hope. For more on ending strong, read tips for a powerful ending to your presentation.
A worked example
This is what that structure sounds like in practice. The example is made up: Kade, software that takes over the paperwork in healthcare.
"On our pilot wards, a nurse spent a third of every shift on paperwork. Not on patients.
For a ward of forty people, that means thirteen full-time jobs going to forms instead of care. And it is exactly the reason people give when they leave the profession. Every care organisation I speak to is trying to solve this with extra hands. There aren't any.
So we built Kade. Kade listens in during the conversation with the patient and fills in the report in the existing records system. The nurse checks and confirms. No new system, no migration: it runs alongside what is already there.
Since January we have been running on two wards of a university hospital. Time spent on paperwork there has dropped by forty percent, and nine out of ten users don't want to go back. Our team has rolled out systems like this before at a large healthcare software vendor.
I'm not looking for investment today. I'm looking for three organisations for the next pilot round. Could you set up half an hour with your care manager?"
Just over two hundred words, about a minute and a half spoken. The rest of your three minutes is room for pace, a pause after your hook, and the first question.
What goes on your screen (and when nothing does)
This is where pitching most often goes wrong.
For a three-minute pitch, you often don't need slides at all. At the table, in a conversation or at a reception, slides make it formal and pull attention away from you. If you know your story, you are the best medium.
If you do use slides, stick to these rules:
No more than four slides for three minutes. That is 45 seconds per slide, and that already feels quick.
One idea per slide. If you have to explain what's on it, there's too much on it.
No text you read out. Your audience reads faster than you speak. They can't do both, so they stop listening.
Images over bullet points. A screenshot of your product says more than four lines of text about your product.
Big numbers. If your proof is a number, let it fill half the screen.
Leave your last slide up, with your ask on it. It stays visible during the conversation and keeps reminding the other person what you want.
Seven things that weaken your pitch
Starting with yourself. Your name and title only become interesting once they know why they should listen.
Jargon. Every word you have to explain costs you five seconds and a little attention.
Trying to say too much. The temptation to mention everything because you only get one shot. That is exactly why you have to choose.
Reading out. From your slides or from a card. You lose eye contact, and with it your persuasiveness.
Not asking for anything. The most common mistake. A pitch without a concrete next step is a monologue.
Apologising. "I'll keep it short." "Sorry, I'm a bit nervous." Leave it out.
Telling the same story every time. The structure stays, the emphasis shifts. An investor wants market and growth, a client wants to know what it gets them, a partner wants to know what they gain from working with you.
Practise, and then really practise
A pitch you have written out once is not a pitch yet. It gets good by saying it out loud.
Write it out, but don't memorise it. Memorised sounds recited, and if you lose one sentence, everything stops. Know the five parts and the first sentence of each. The rest will come.
Time yourself. Almost everyone runs over the first few times. Cut until you are on time without rushing.
Film yourself. Painful to watch back, and more useful than practising in front of the mirror ten times.
Test it on someone outside your field. Then ask what they remember. What they repeat is your real pitch. The rest is noise.
Prepare for the three most likely objections. Not in your pitch, but in your head.
If speaking itself gets in your way, that is more often about technique than content. That is what our public speaking training is about.
From pitch to deck
The three-minute pitch opens the door. What comes next is usually a deck: a fuller story for an investment round, a selection process or a board decision.
That is a different craft. It is about a storyline across fifteen to twenty slides, about charts that let your numbers speak, and about a version that convinces even when you are not in the room. Because that happens: your deck gets forwarded to people who weren't there.
Mr.Prezident builds those decks, for start-ups through to listed companies. Read more about a pitch presentation for investment and funding, or see how a hedge fund raised funding.
Working on a proposal rather than a pitch? Read your proposal is not an attachment, it is your pitch.
Frequently asked questions
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What is a pitch?
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What does pitching mean?
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How long should a good pitch be?
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What is the difference between a pitch and a presentation?
