Resources For Startups

For Startups

Index Business Planning Financials Pitching Raising Money Legal

When early-stage companies start talking to potential partners, customers, advisors, employees and financiers, they are armed with these two essentials -- the elevator pitch and the executive summary. The former is an absolute must. From all accounts, both play extremely important 'concept streamlining and focusing' roles in the business planning process as well.

The requisite non-disclosure agreements are useful to have as well.

The Elevator Pitch
This is a 30 to 60 second summary of what your business is about. Formulating your pitch is a very valuable exercise, since it forces you to isolate what the most important/appealing aspects of your business are, and to focus your business ideas. Also, if you're a b2c company, and you can't articulate your product ideas in under a minute, you may have a tough marketing effort ahead of you. In general, from what I've heard, ten or more versions is not uncommon. Here are some links that could help:

Quick: What's the Deal? From the MIT Enterprise Forum, an article by Jim Geisman, expounding the eight key parts of the elevator pitch.
How to get your point across in 30 seconds or less: A useful book by Milo Frank, on business communications in general.
The Elevator: I hear that they have 300 sample elevator pitches for $150.00. Haven't seen the actual pitches -- let me know if you do.

The Executive Summary
Think of this as a mini-business plan and concept/team marketing document, all rolled into one. After reading this document, the relevant person should want to partner with, join, buy from, or fund your company, or should at least be interested enough to get back to you for more information. The length of the summary varies (1 to 3 pages, typically). Most include a description of your product concept, current team, target customers, potential market size, competitors, key differentiators (how will you build and sustain competitive advantage), and brief financials (revenue projections and cash needs at least a few months forward).

For consumer products/services, a brief marketing plan is standard. Some people include a crisp, 2-3 line exit strategy ("we're going to IPO" doesn't quite cut it). If relevant, the stage of product development, key partnerships and patents are also summarized.

I haven't really found any decent sites that guide one through writing an executive summary. And most samples on the web are either too dry, or are poorly written. Anyway, here are a couple of links that people have used in the past:

The AmEx Small Buiness Exchange: Executive Summary
Broad guidelines, and somewhat useful worksheets and samples.
DawnTreader: Investment Criteria
Not an executive summary guideline, but gives one a sense for what makes a successful summary work.