Have you pitched your idea to a potential customer, a partner, a venture capitalist, your manager, your chief product officer or even your family? Was the idea received with open arms or was it shot down?

In my opinion there are only three types of ideas:

49.99% of the ideas are disastrous.

49.99% of the ideas are just not understood.

3) .02% of great ideas are well understood by its audience.

This blog is an attempt to make that tiny decimal bigger.

A. The ingredients

Table of Contents

There are 4 key ingredients to any idea or a pitch!!

1. Relative advantage

The pitch for your product should easily convey the advantage of your product over existing standards.

The key here is to identify advantages over existing standards.

Think of as an anchor that people have in their minds to understand the problem with the current system.

For example, you can acknowledge Uber’s value only when you understand the problem with the existing taxi system. Or you can understand how drones can revolutionize agriculture only when you understand problems with the current agricultural system.

Without these anchors, it may be difficult for your audience to understand the problem you are solving.

Remember, your pitch should clearly articulate the problem that you are wishing to solve, else you may end up with a great product that no one needs. Learn from the peanut butter pump pitch.

2. Complexity

You should be able to explain your pitch to a 14 year old or a 60 year old and get them to understand it. It doesn’t matter whether they agree with the value, but they should be able to understand the value.

If you take more than a minute to help understand the problem & value, then there is a strong possibility that you have not understood the problem yourself.

For example, I am still trying to figure out what thisall about. If you figure it out, then let me know.

3. Tradability

Tradability means the smallest iteration to try. A pitch backed by something triable is 10x more effective than just slide decks. You can show and tell instead of just tell.

All 3 terms are critical here. It is minimum. Don’t make a $2000 Segway as an MVP. No one will try something that expensive.

It is a product. Don’t call a tweet or a video as a product and assume the feedback from the video constitutes your product feedback.

It is viable. It is something that works. If your final product is a submarine, then your MVP should at least be a boat. Here, I am assuming that being on water is of some value.

A minimum viable product will also help you move the product through the market and get some early signals.