One Sentence that Will Help Your Company Succeed
Through my 2.5 years of running a startup company, as well as my experience at Y Combinator, I have learned that simplicity is an essential practice when it comes to pitching your company. As soon as you throw out a word or phrase that is overly complex, your audience will disengage with what you have to say. If you can’t explain what your company does to a 3rd grader, then you should simplify your explanation. Especially when you’re talking to investors, your time is limited. You don’t want to waste time by educating them on what you do, when you can quickly answer that in just one sentence.
So tell me, what does your company do?
Develop a One-Liner
Whether you’re pitching to investors, customers, or friends, the question of what you do will inevitably come up time and time again. As a founder, it is your job to clearly articulate what your company does, and it should only take one sentence!
During the early days of our company, I used to give an overly verbose answer to this question: “We have reduced worker liability by combining the versatility of a flying drone with the capabilities of an industrial cleaning system.” What is worker liability in this context? What does the versatility of a flying drone entail? What does an industrial cleaning system even clean? In just one, unclear sentence, the person I’m speaking to already has their mind racing with questions, but they don’t even understand what I do yet!
Simplify Your One Liner
Now, whenever someone asks what Lucid Drone Technologies does, we say: “We build drones that can clean buildings.” 7 words. That’s all it takes! What is it we do? We build drones. What do our drones do? They clean buildings. Our answer is incredibly simple, but it doesn’t lead anyone to still wonder what we do. By successfully answering what we do in a succinct manner, it allows for a more meaningful series of follow-up questions.
Be Concise
After you get past the initial question, investors will continue to ask clarifying questions to learn more about your business. In this setting, the “less is more” philosophy always works best. Don’t give a 2 minute answer to a question that could be answered in 20 seconds. When your answers are direct, you appear more confident, investors have more time to ask clarifying questions, and they walk away with a better understanding of your business, which increases the likelihood of them investing. Here are a few examples of followup questions:
- Your drones can clean buildings?! Yes, our drones are connected to an on-ground cleaning system by a hose, and they can easily fly up to great heights and spray cleaning solutions on buildings. Our drones can clean windows, bricks, and nearly every surface in between.
- Wow! So do you provide the services? No, we lease our technology to cleaning companies.
- Why do cleaning companies want to use your technology? There are three main reasons. 1) Suspending human workers above ground can lead to serious accidents and death. 2) We help companies save money by lowering their workers compensation and equipment costs. 3) Because our drones clean twice as quickly as traditional methods on average, we allow companies to double their workload and revenue potential.
- How difficult is it to fly the drones? It’s incredibly easy. We have programmed our drones to be user-friendly, and we can teach you the necessary skills to perform a cleaning flight in a matter of minutes.
In question 4, I could have easily talked about how we integrate LiDARs, GPS units, IMUs, and a host of other sensors that make our drones user-friendly. This would have been a long and technically complicated answer, which the investor likely wasn’t interested in hearing. It’s difficult enough to schedule time with investors, so you need to make every second count!
In summary, practice your one-liner. It will pay dividends for you and your company in the long run. Once you master your one-liner, focus on giving clear, concise answers to followup questions to maximize an investor’s ability to thoroughly understand your business.
