Elevator Pitch Examples From Successful Companies

If you’ve been looking for ideas for creating effective fundraising strategies, check out these elevator pitch examples from successful companies. You could be an entrepreneur with a great idea who wants to start your own business. But, you may be having trouble finding the funds to transform your concept into a profitable reality.

Turning to angel investors or venture capitalists for the funds needed to bring your dreams come true is the most viable option available.

So many people approach them for prospective investment opportunities. You will have to do something extraordinary to get the right attention from them.

Coming up with a well-developed and professionally polished elevator pitch is essential in the quest for start-up funds. Your success and failure can be determined in the first very minute of your initial meeting with the investor.

In this article, we will take a look at some basic concepts about elevator pitches. You need to know these strategies as a true entrepreneur.

What is an Elevator Pitch?

An elevator pitch is a brief and precise description of your business concept, main start-up idea, or product and company introduction. This elevator pitch should not last more than a minute.

In 30 to 60 seconds you should be able to explain the basic idea of the start-up to prospective investors. And leave them inquisitive to learn more.

An entrepreneur, who can draft an elevator pitch that is truly a piece of art, is sure to win the investment attention of the venture capitalist.

A truly enterprising and capable entrepreneur should not underestimate the power of this 30-second introduction. They should know the right way to distill the real value of their prospective company. And nail down to its complete quintessence in a brief and precise elevator pitch.

So, in short, an elevator pitch is one of the most critical and important stages that you will face as an entrepreneur or start-up founder.

Avoid Confusing Pitch Decks with Elevator Pitches

As mentioned above, an elevator pitch is a 30-60 second description or speech. You’ll present it to a potential investor to convince him about the attractiveness of your business proposal.

A well-crafted pitch helps gain the attention and curiosity of the potential investor during a brief encounter. You might have this chance at a business event, meeting, or party.

A pitch deck, on the other hand, is a more detailed formal presentation to the potential investor that comprises 10-15 Powerpoint slides and commonly lasts for a few minutes.

It’s a formal way to introduce your company and business plan to the investor. So, make sure to keep the two separate and prepare for them separately as well.

Keep in mind that in fundraising storytelling is everything. In this regard for a winning pitch deck to help you here, take a look at the template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

Before we move down to some essential and practical guidelines about crafting an effective elevator pitch, here are some great elevator pitch examples from successful companies that you should be able to relate to.

Elevator Pitch Deck Examples from Successful Companies

An elevator pitch is something that remains confidential and professional between the prospective investor and the entrepreneur.

Founders of most successful companies today might not even recall what their elevator pitch sounded like.

With little or no real-life examples available to the budding entrepreneurs of today, we have tried to effectively figure out what kind of elevator pitches some renowned and successful companies might have come up with to gain investor attention and ultimately the funds for starting their ventures.

Airbnb

A company established in 2009, Airbnb is an online marketplace that helps connect people who are looking for a place to stay temporarily, to rooms and accommodation spaces worldwide.

Elevator Pitch (Should Be)

For a tourist traveling to any part of the world, accommodation and expenses are the biggest two worries.

Worldwide, people have extra rooms and spare beds that they are willing to rent to tourists.

Our platform will bring together the tourists and local community, and help them create a mutually beneficial relationship.

Tourists will be able to get cheaper bargains on rooms and while locals will be monetizing their vacant spaces.

Our platform will be connecting the two and charging a 10% commission.

Points to Take From This:

This might have been the elevator pitch that Airbnb used to get themselves the funding for their start-up.

A few points that you should consider in this pitch include:

• The use of the word tourist instead of traveler is because back in 2009 Airbnb did not specifically target business clients.
• The issue of expenses is highlighted as the price is one of the major concerns of tourists traveling to different destinations of the world.
• Locals are interested in earning from their vacant and unoccupied rooms and spaces.

These three points have been the focal point of this elevator pitch. The key to finding solutions to these issues lies in the prospective Airbnb service. And, it is one of the best elevator pitch examples from successful companies.

WeWork

Established in 2010, WeWork is an office renting service. It buys a corporate space and then transforms it into a shared or smaller office space that can be rented out.

Elevator Pitch (Should Be)

The US has more than 40 million independent workers from different fields. Renting yourself an office space can be expensive and difficult in large cities such as New York.

Our company provides this space as a service. With 20 different locations, we offer the opportunity to rent out a small office space without having to go through the hassle and costs of traditional leasing.

We offer up to 25% off your rent and provide you accessibility to a shared front desk, and the opportunity to share an environment with independent professionals like you.

Points to Take From This

• Targeted clients are independent professionals not working in a conventional office environment
• Overhead expenses and costs are areas of concern for the independent professionals
• Starting with 20 locations in New York
• You save 25% by opting in for this service.

Slack

Founded in 2009, Slack is a communication and collaborative computer application that helps bring teams together to work, enabling members of an organization to communicate in groups or one-to-one. It is a tool for productivity enhancement and collaborative working.

Elevator Pitch (Should Be)

Employees are often overburdened with emails, messages, and official communications. With an aim to improve teamwork, employees often end up wasting time in unproductive meetings and discussions.

Slack is a program that enhances efficiency and helps improve the organizational communication of the team.

It supports teamwork and remote operations through integration with several productivity tools like Calendars, Google Docs, Zoom, Dropbox etc.

Points to Take From This

• Target clients are employee teams and business organizations
• The desired outcome is an increase in productivity and employee efficiency
• The product helps in improving organizational communication, reduces wastage of time and effort, and allows collaborative working through integrated tools.

These are a few examples of strong elevator pitch examples from successful companies that might have helped them get the investment that they needed for starting up their businesses.

What is interesting in all these examples is that they are all different from each other. No single elevator pitch, even from the same industry will be the same.

Each pitch that has a successful history will have its own strengths and key areas of inspiration. Each successful elevator pitch will have its own strengths and key areas of direction and inspiration.

Other than generic guidelines of being short, precise, simple, and clear, there is no other hard and fast rule that can make your pitch stand out among the crowd.

Would you like more information about what elevator pitchesn? Check out this video I have put together where I explain in detail how its done.

Things You Should Keep in Mind While Drafting an Elevator Pitch

Below are some key tips and guidelines that you should follow to come up with an effective and successful elevator pitch for your start-up or business idea.

Information Should be Short, Relevant, and Valuable

An elevator pitch is a brief and short piece of information that you can give to a potential investor at a sudden or planned encounter of 30-60 seconds.

This means that you have to carefully evaluate your options and include only the most necessary information in your speech.

But with so much to do and so much on your hands, keeping this information relevant, valuable, and effective for the potential investor can be a challenge.

Things like market needs, targeted clientele, unique selling proposition, competitive advantage, and basic business model should not be omitted from the introduction.

The effectiveness of an elevator pitch is its ability to help you grab the attention of the potential investor. Using it as a conversation starter its outcome should include a meeting with the investor.

So, in order to make the elevator pitch successful, it should have something interesting and relatable and should be able to make him curious to know more.

Clear information and the use of simple comprehendible language is a must, otherwise, the listener will fail to understand what you are trying to convey.

Should Not Be Too Technical

Elevator pitches should not contain technical details and hard to understand the jargon. An elevator pitch aims to put across your business idea with clarity and clear understanding.

Using jargon will make your message difficult to comprehend and your elevator pitch will lose its value to the investor. His attention will be on the complications rather than focusing on the business itself.

So, always keep in mind to use simple and easy-to-understand language to make your elevator pitch effective, as well as practical. Should you check around the best elevator pitch examples from successful companies, these ideas are sure to stand out.

Keep it Short

Investors are very busy people. With so many entrepreneurs and business professionals trying to reach out to them, they are often overburdened with information and data.

Listening to hundreds and sometimes thousands of ideas and business proposals, they are not interested in hearing complex details and explanations of your business.

So, keep your first impression short and crisp. Do not exceed the 30 – 60 second rule and try to encompass the pitch in a small informative and clear paragraph.

Final Thoughts

Drafting the right elevator pitch requires not only enthusiasm but the know-how of the art and science behind this small yet vital component of your fundraising endeavor or business start-up idea.

Although there are no hard and fast rules to follow for making your pitch successful, you need to understand the basic need, outcome, and results that you seek from the conversation.

Understanding the listener is important. You need to have an insight into what the potential investor might be looking for. Consider his investment priorities, funding criteria, and past projects.

Add valuable information based on metrics and statistics to validate your proposal. But this information should not be too technical or un-relatable.

Following the pitch deck examples of successful companies and start-up founders is a good idea, but only use them to get inspiration and knowledge about how the pitch should sound like.

There are no right and wrong elevator pitches. It all depends on how you can differentiate your offering and gain the attention of the potential investor.

You may find interesting as well our free library of business templates. There you will find every single template you will need when building and scaling your business completely for free. See it here.