Could you describe your company in 60 seconds? They call it the elevator speech, or elevator pitch, and it’s a good exercise.

I was there last Thursday to hear these two pitches, two of the best from 16 one-minute pitches at the University of Oregon’s New Venture Championship. These are good examples of classic elevator pitches, limited to 60 seconds.

The first, from Visiray, a team representing the University of Oregon:



And the second one, KarmaGoat, from UCLA.

It’s a good exercise. Whether it’s for an elevator speech competition, a real ride up a real elevator, explaining what you do to the person in the seat next to you on the plane, or just for your own satisfaction of getting it all down in a short-and-sweet one-minute pitch, I think every business owner should be able to do that.

By the way, I did a four-part series on my main blog on how to optimize an elevator speech.

Tim BerryTim Berry

Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.