Thursday, August 28, 2008

Pitching skills --- overrated

When you read about the internet startup, incubation and VC business you get a lot of advice on pitching. Pitching - present your business case in "7 minutes". YCombinator even seems to have a pitching-training program for their startups.

Although good sales and presentation skills are important in starting a new business I think the skills of pitching are far overrated and it is unfair to decide not to invest into an idea by seeing only a 7 minute presentation. It is the VC-s who only have so little per idea and force this "fast-food presentation policy".

I mean if you cannot make a good 7 minute presentation of your startup it does not mean automatically that:
- The idea is bad
- You are a bad manager
- You can not make the business work.
- ...
Actually it does not mean much at all in my mind. So in MicroLink incubator we give the idea owners at least an hour for an interview.

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