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How Bad Entrepreneurs Reveal Themselves in the First 5 Seconds of a Pitch
A few simple words is all it takes to figure out a founder’s odds of startup success.
The other night, I had dinner with a group of 40-ish young entrepreneurs on my university’s campus. As you’d expect, I spoke with lots of enthusiastic founders and heard lots of pitches about the projects they’re working on. But one student, in particular, stood out. He was clearly passionate about entrepreneurship and the startup he was building. He shared how he had spent the summer in a corporate internship he didn’t enjoy, but, as soon as his workday ended, he would meet with his co-founders and they’d work on their startup until late into the evening.
Eventually, I asked him to give me a quick pitch for his startup. He lit up with excitement, and then he began with, “We’re building a…”
I didn’t hear the rest of his sentence because, honestly, I stopped listening. I could tell where this was going, and it wasn’t going anywhere good.
I cut him off mid-sentence. I’m sure it seemed a little rude, but I needed to seize the moment for a valuable lesson. “I’m not trying to be a jerk,” I told him, “but the moment you started talking about what you’re building, you lost me.”
