Yesterday, I spent my day at Startup Day 2010. There I got to meet new people, catch up with others, listen to interesting stories and practice my pitching skills. No, I didn’t participate the pitching competition. However when you meet somebody, generally they ask what do you do. This conversation goes something like this: “Hi, how are you? What have you been doing?” or “Hi my name is Lalala. So, what do you do?”.  Most of the time, my response was:

Currently I’m working with startup called Yanzi. We sell a product that helps owners mange their business, through cameras and sensors. You can do this through the web or a mobile phone.

By the time I said the word “sensors”, they were looking for the cookies. And those that paid attention, were wondering what is special about Yanzi. That made me realized that I was doing something wrong.

When developing any product or service, “test early and often”. The same applies to pitches, there is no way to find out if the pitch delivers the message, until you try it with different people. So, if the pitch sucks (like mine) you will find this out, before the cookies are gone. Or, if you have a good pitch, it will help you refine it.

You can refine it by tweaking details of it and see what works and what doesn’t, until you have a great pitch. And it becomes a great pitch, when people receive the message you intend to deliver and feels natural to talk about it.

To solve my issue with the bad pitch, I turned to using a framework called the Golden Circle: Why, How and What. This is a simple idea developed by Simon Sinek. He states that to deliver a inspiring message, one should start by the Why we do things, instead of starting with How or What. So, based on the Golden Circle, here is my pitch:

[Why]

Business owners should focus on the important things:  customers and families. Instead of trying to control every part of their business.

[How]

24/7 remote  access to your business, through a computer or mobile phone. In addition, providing history of camera recordings and sensor data.

[What]

A plug and play, solution with data recorder, cameras and sensors that can be connected, that can be access from anywhere that has a internet connection.

As Sinek states, making money is not Why, that is result. So, ask yourself: Why to you make what you make? Why to you blog? Why to you dance? Why to you work? Why do you study?

I invite you to try it and you will see that your message will be much better, it will have more substance and will be less boring.

This mismatch in science and business is the idea that is worth spreading, so enjoy this TED talk by Dan Pink. Also, at the end of the post, you will find the written wrap-up of the presentation.

(Video via wi-fi-de-do)

Here is the Wrap-up of the presentation:

The new OS to run our business revolves around three elements:

• Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives.
• Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters.
• Purpose: Purpose, the yearning to what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

• One: Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are a natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances.
• Two: Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity.
• Three: the secret to high performance, isn’t rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive. The drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter.

Resources from the presentation:

Here is a link to the Duncker’s Candle Problem.

Article by Business Week on the ROWE (or Results-Only Work Environment)