The purpose of this course is to introduce you to current global challenges in conservation and development, including changes in both sectors. This course will inspire you to rethink assumptions to address global challenges in conservation and development, and introduce you to new models and approaches that harness technological, behavioral, and financial innovation. This course will equip you with the insights, skills and approaches necessary to successfully overcome these obstacles. In addition, this course will provide participants with the tools, models, and approaches to address global grand challenges in conservation and development, to question fundamental assumptions, and to create and execute new solutions. Course participants will be trained in the processes around innovation and design to address global grand challenges. This includes content focused on constructing innovation pipelines, principals of design and engineering unique to the developing world and to conservation (Design for the Other 90%), on harnessing and developing disruptive technologies, principles of behavior and marketing, and on overcoming the challenges with setting up social ventures. The course format will facilitate the development of a global community of innovators who will help solve the current and future grand challenges our planet faces in conservation and development, and will encourage thinking about how to do so that rethinks traditional assumptions and approaches within both conservation and development. This course will leverage the incredible idealism and interest in social entrepreneurship, design, and innovation among the millennials, in the US and abroad, and is intended to appeal to those interested in the maker movement. It also seeks to engage individuals in the developing world who are closest to the problems of conservation and development, who would benefit from the approaches taught in the course, and who can leverage their own knowledge of local culture.
What Makes a Pitch Effective
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From the course by Duke University
Innovation and Design for Global Grand Challenges
31 ratings
From the lesson
Entrepreneurship
Once you have your idea or innovation, how do you translate it into an enterprise (entrepreneurship) or a startup within a company or institution (intrapreneurship)? How do you influence other companies to adopt your novel approach (extrapreneurship)? How do you create a social enterprise, a value-driven organization that borrows heavily from tools of the private sector, or a new for-profit venture that has a double bottom line – the twin aims of both profit and impact? This module is an introduction to the art of the start – from understanding how to think about your business model, to putting together a team, to pitching for funding, and getting to scale. <p> To get started, view the video "Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship."</p>
Meet the Instructors
Alex Dehgan, J.D., M.S., Ph.DThe Chanler Innovator in Residence and the Inaugural David M. Rubenstein Fellow
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
One of the things to recognize about pitches is
they're going on all the time around us.
Now you guys probably have watched a little bit of TV and
you've seen this incredibly popular show Shark Tank right?
And it is actually amazing practice for
you to dissect a pitch that a whole series of people are doing.
Do they fundamentally understand their market?
Do they have a pathway to scale?
But the fact is pitches really are arguments right?
They're arguments of why you should be funded.
And like any other argument, you rely on evidence,
you rely on a series of assumptions.
For us, it's really the operationalization of the business model canvas and
the business model that you guys have come up with for your individual corporations.
And it's being able to translate these categories, these questions from
your partners, to your activities, to why should you get that funding?
And how are you going to get revenue and
where's that revenue going to come from into a presentation form.
As we think about pitches,
I think first there's just some really basic things we should know about it.
Do you understand who the people you're actually pitching to
what they're interested in.
Are they the right audience?
Do you understand that audience?
Keeping it actually very simple in terms of the narrative itself.
It's really important actually to have, and this is the idea more story and
less information, but you have an appendix that has the data if you're questioned,
and you will be interrupted during your pitches.
And I will interrupt you guys during your pitches.
Being able to have that data at hand in your appendix to be able to answer it,
being able to know every answer cold.
Keep it concise.
And I think, really importantly and Wendy got it, this in terms of entrepreneurship.
It is do you have a vision?
Do you have passion?
Do you have energy that conveys?
Are you vested fundamentally into this problem, into this company?
Maintaining focus.
You cannot be all over the place.
You have to have a unifying concept.
You have to have a narrative that leads through.
This is the idea of the story.
Actually making is a learning experience for individuals.
Using props and visuals within what you're trying to do.
And really important is how do you get people to want to close the deal?
And remembering not to forget to ask for money.
So I was talking to Patrick earlier today and my first six months,
I wad doing pitches, and I never asked people for money.
You think you're asking people for money, but do you actually ask people for money?
Do you actually ask for resources or something from these individuals that you
are seeing to make a case to, all you've done is give them presentation.
And it's an important part of what you're trying to do.
For me, it's about these four things.
There's a lot of different things out there on what is an effective pitch.
Reid Hoffman, who is a major investor in everything from LinkedIn to a number of
other companies, has a really great analysis of what works well for a pitch.
There's a lot of awesome, super successful pitch decks for
companies that you guys probably all know.
We'll see a couple of pictures of them.
But for me, I think it's about, what is the problem you're to solve?
What is the product?
And probably, really important,
what is the potential that you have to solve that problem,
to be sustainable, to get to scale within what you're trying to do.
And then, people do not tend to only fund corporations,
to fund social enterprises, to fund organizations or innovations.
They're fundamentally making a bet on you, on to people.
Why is it that the group of people that you have assembled,
have the right skill set to be able to carry out what you're trying to propose,
in terms of what you're doing?
If you're thinking, and this is just an example, it doesn't need to be exactly
like this, laying out the vision and the thesis, laying out your initial data.
What is the market opportunity or
opportunity to actually have social impact on what you're trying to do?
What is the fundamental problem?
What is the product or service that you're trying to sell?
Thinking about the revenue model, what are the risks and
the assumptions that you're making and this is really important.
You're going to make a whole series of assumptions.
It is important to be transparent about what those risks are for the investors,
what are those risks for your organization.
What is your growth strategy, who is your team, how have you done so far.
And it doesn't have to be in this order, but
thinking about competition in your competitive advantage right.
Why is it you that should get the money over any of the 500 to 600 to
1000 companies that would make a pitch to a VC or an organization?
Why is it you over anyone else that's going to be funded by
the Gates Foundation or by the Moore Foundation?
And it's being able to make that fundamental case.
And I think going back to the potential part,
what is the problem that you are going to be solving.
And I think it's this question, why does that matter?
So whether or not, and a grant is a pitch, right?
Why is the problem actually important and
why is this the approach to be able to do it?
What is the size of the market that you're actually taking on?
Why is that market opportunity actually huge?
And how is it that your particular innovation will help take
advantage of that?
Going back to your design elements who is your customer?
What are the expected revenues?
What are the costs of actually producing your product?
What are the costs of distributing your product?
What are the costs of getting new customers to what you are trying to do?
What are you going to do with the money they actually give you?
And then who are you?
Who is the management team?
And the question I think this is probably the fundamental question that
you are seeking to be able to demonstrate within what you're trying to do.
So when we're at Aid and I was talking to the folks at Seed and
to the other universities that we funded, I would remind people at every
meeting that every dollar I was spending on Duke was a dollar that wasn't
spending on a vaccine, or a dollar I wasn't spending on a protected area.
So why in the hell should Duke get that money?
Why in the hell should you guys get the money for what you're trying to do and
why is this the time to be able to do it now within how we're thinking about this?
I think it's really important to brag,
what is, Branson actually says be unapologetically
disruptive in terms of what you're presenting.
Be absolutely clear that you are the one that has the advantage in the marketplace,
and you've done your research to look at the other customers.
You've done your research to know who else is trying to create a lionfish pizza, or
whatever you may ultimately be taking up, right?
You guys are the ones that are trying to solve this.
Who's already doing this, and why is it that your approach will actually work, and
be sustainable, and get to scale within what you're trying to do.
Part of the way to be able to convey is we've all seen this ad and
this guy is a master inventor and master pitch man is how do you
actually convey the fear of missing out within what you're trying to do.
If you do not invest in this now,
you're losing on an opportunity to get in at the bottom.
If you do not buy whatever product he is trying to sell, I’m not sure what it is,
now you're going to get that extra knife and operators are standing by and
it's only really good for the next five minutes, right.
We don't believe that but, and we'll give you one more thing.
How do you convey that, within what you're trying to do in the pitch?
How do you convey the urgency?
And I cannot tell you how many pitch sessions that I was in where we
knocked it out of the block.
We got everything except for the urgency, in what we were trying to do as well.
Why is it that we needed those people to make a committment on the spot?
And it is the hardest thing to ask.
And being able to say now is the time is really key.
We talked about the message, and
it's really easy to say as your thinking about the pitch,
to be getting into a really complicated model of what you are trying to do.
And when you do that, you actually lose the people you are trying to impress.
Whether you have seven minutes, ten minutes or thirty minutes and
it is lucky when you have 30 minutes.
You're probably not going to get an hour or two hours.
How do you get that core idea,
that conveys those different pieces that we talked about?
Why do you have a comparative advantage?
What is it that you're trying to solve?
Who is it that you have on your team that will make you uniquely competitive to
actually be able to solve it?
And why is it that you guys will not only be sustainable and make good use of
the money, but how will you get to scale within what you're trying to do?
And those if you look at the pitch text for mint which is the financial model.
It's this really simple concept.
They got it down and
in fact many people argue that the first slide it should be the elevator pitch.
The one minute concept that bounds the very thing that you're actually trying
to say.
What is it that Mint's doing?
They're helping you take back your wallet.
They're helping you gain financial security and financial information so
you can make better decisions around what you're doing.
And it's great.
You look at Square, it's the simplest way for them to make money.
And for LinkedIn, really simple, they boiled down what LinkedIn is really about.
Find and contact people you need through the people that you already trust.
The entire element of that company and
what it does has been summarized on the first slide of their pitch stack.
And their pitch decks, the pitch decks for these organizations aren't very long if
you look at them, and longer is definitely not better within what your trying to do.
One of the easiest ways to kind of get people to understand what your trying to
do is to analogize.
So when LinkedIn was thinking about who do we analogize to,
there was a couple of companies who were out there at the time.
So they could have been a Friendster for business.
People knew Friendster was a very well known brand.
Or they could be professional people search 2.0.
What they actually went with was that second one and
there was a really fundamental reason.
And Reed Hoffman goes into it in his blog on the LinkedIn pitch that he created.
They though about the first thing that they proposed was Friendster for
business because everyone knew what Friendster was.
The problem was Friendster never made money.
And because it never made money, what was starting to make
money in 2004 hand over fist was Google Adwords.
And so they were trying to connect back to that idea of search
which was the idea to try to connect to Google.
But I think you're right that it doesn't sound as clear cut as it could have been.
But that was their rationale.
How can we actually get these people thinking they're going to make a huge
amount of money?
Because that's, for the VCs at least, that's what they're thinking about.
But there's a thousand ways that you could analogize what you're doing.
So could direct payments for conservation be for conservation?
How do we actually take examples of what you guys are trying to build and
tie it to something that has been successful, whether in the social
entrepreneurship space or within the space within the private sector space?
What if the very thing you want to analogize to Is the thing that is actually
your competitor?
And I think the answer is if you're going to do that and you're going to be able
to use that you've got to show why we're doing things actually differently.
And the question is, if you're doing things so differently that you have
a competitive advantage, maybe that analogy os not the appropriate analogy.
Maybe there are other analogies that are not in the same sector that you can
be able to use.
If it is really identical, then you've got a challenge.
How are you going to actually be able to withstand competition in that marketplace?
Honor your team, and I think this is really important [COUGH] again people
are going to actually invest in people in addition to investing in the companies.
Who are the founders and the key team members?
What relevant experience does that team have?
Why is this team uniquely capable to execute the business plan?
What motivates the founders?
How do you plan to scale in the next 12 months.
And generally, I've seen this.
I've reviewed whole series of articles on how people recommend doing pitches and
a whole series of articles from the perspective of VCs on how in
preparation for this lecture.
And I kept seeing this.
Your team's on the stage.
It shouldn't just be the CEO that's talking.
Being able to actually demonstrate what they bring is important in terms of making
the case for what you're trying to do.
If you go back to Mint, so Mint is a financial software that collects and
actually goes into all your financial databases and
provides you a snapshot with your expenditures right.
Taking back your wallet.
And you look at where the founders on that team come from,
they're individuals who really know search engine optimization and
your ability to actually be found, and be the first thing that comes up.
Your ability to actually protect when you're dealing with personal, right.
When I signed up for Mint, I was very nervous about giving them access
to my bank account, my credit cards and my mortgages and
everything else I own, which I handed over to this website, right?
So having people who know about security and have worked for
a security company on your founder team is probably a really good thing.
Marketing around micropayments for PayPal,
probably important in terms of what you're trying to do.
So you've got the people who'll make sure that this thing will be launched properly.
And then thinking about, again, anti-fraud as well SaaS
data systems that you're looking at are our important within it.
So this team as I'm thinking about it, a CEO, an engineer, a marketer,
and a designer is the perfect team that should be up there launching Mint.
And so how do you actually parlay your skills within what you are offering for
why you're the right people to actually be able to launch whatever your
startup is in terms of how you're trying to do.
Risks and assumptions.
You don't hide assumptions.
You don't hide your risks.
Address what the investor would be worried about up front.
I would be very worried about that company.
That sounds remarkably like what you are trying to do.
What do you see is the principle risk to the business?
So, a lack of demand is a great example of risk, where the legal risk, or
technology risk.
What if your app doesn't work?
What if your app actually, this was a program that was meant for
the developing world, and it's dependent on smartphones.
Most of those smartphones are probably used in cities.
What if your entire innovation is based on the rural countryside?
Is that a risk?
How much of a risk, how much are you betting on what's going to happen
with the growth of smartphones over time?
Do you have regulatory risks?
Can the government change what it's doing and essentially take you out of business?
Product liability risks within what you're trying to do.
So if someone broke into Mint and stole everything that I owned,
all my banks account, my mortgage, took over these things.
How is the company protected against those things and then what steps do you
anticipate to mitigate all the risk with that that you have.
Assumptions it is why do you think this is going to be sustainable?
Why do you think there is demand?
Why do you think there is scale?
And you have to be realistic.
You can be really bold in what you're proposing but you also have a balance.
It's an attention with your ability to be realistic about what you've actually done.
And that is really the way that you succeed is actually doing the evidence and
doing the research into your market and
the research into your users around what you're trying to do,
and it's not just about that technology trap that's up there.
Wendy talked about the customers, but thinking about putting your
customers in your pitch, and what have you learned from your customers.
Because most of the time, the people you are pitching to will actually
want to know whether you have talked to people on the ground,
you understand what the landscape is.
Whether you're a for-profit company or a hybrid or an NGO,
you need to understand who your customers are.
And as Wendy pointed out, you can have many different customers.
How do you actually allow for iteration to happen within what you're trying to do?
And then, really importantly, and
I expect this from all of you guys, practice pitching.
Practice difficult questions.
We will ask you them.
Expect to be interrupted.
Expect to be made uncomfortable.
Pay attention to detail.
Do a demonstration of what you have.
Understand, again, your audience, one more time.
Look at other pitch decks.
There's a lot of them that are out there.
Understand your product or your service well.
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