Pitching a Business

Share your business pitch and get a FREE copy of Business Plan Pro

Can you communicate the core of your business plan in just a couple of minutes? How about in a single 140-character tweet? Our new Bplans Business Pitch tool can help you develop and refine your core message. Add your pitch now and you can even get a FREE copy of our best-selling Business Plan Pro...

By Bailey Koharchick

Shark Tank – Perfect your pitch

A new television show debuted this past weekend, a show based on a popular UK show, Dragons’ Den. The US show is called “Shark Tank“.  The “tank” is a panel of highly successful business people with investment money to spend. Each week 4 to 5 entrepreneurs pitch their idea to the panel. There is a...

By Bplans

Pitching your business: a Survivor’s Story

You might call it, “I pitched my business to venture capitalists and lived to tell the story.” Scott Gerber, who wrote this piece for Entrepreneur.com, called it 6 Steps to the Perfect Pitch. He didn’t get the money, but he learned a lot: As you might have guessed, I didn’t walk out of that meeting...

By Tim Berry

How to Do the Business Pitch

I’ve seen so many pitches recently; literally several dozen. There was the University of Oregon venture competition, then the Rice University venture competition, one at Smart-ups in Eugene, and then we had the Big Idea Bash in Portand. I’ve seen some great pitches, actually, far more of them good than bad; but I can’t resist adding my...

By Tim Berry

Ask Tim Berry: The Elevator Pitch

Tim Berry’s evergreen video talks about the basics for a good Elevator Pitch in this month’s video. If you can’t view the video here, then check it out on my old YouTube channel. Or look for the rest of our business and marketing focused videos here: Palo Alto Software’s YouTube Videos

By Bplans

Proving Authenticity is Critical for Elevator Pitches

I found out later she really didn’t want to do it. Clover Earl (second from left in the picture below) so much didn’t want to that she actually went back to the registration and took her business card out of the basket. She smiled and said “No, not ready.” But there was a chance to...

By Tim Berry

For Your Business Pitch, Tell Stories

I’ve been watching a lot of business pitches lately–several dozen in the past three weeks, actually–in my role as angel investor and venture competition judge. Pitches can be tough, but they are also vital. Your audience is judging your dominance of your own business by how well you come off. They don’t mean to, but...

By Tim Berry

Plan vs. Presentation vs. Parts of Both

In the rarefied air of the high-tech venture-capital-seeking new venture, these days the presentation–alias slide deck, PowerPoint, keynote or “the pitch”–is indispensable. What’s weird, though, is that some people talk as if the presentation replaces a business plan. That’s sort of dumb, don’t you think? Doing a presentation without having first done a plan? How...

By Tim Berry