The Elevator Pitch Exercise Most Founders Skip

A founder gives a different thirty-second answer every time someone asks "what does your company do?" — none of them the same.

Why this keeps coming up

A founder gives a different thirty-second answer every time someone asks "what does your company do?" — none of them the same. This is one of those situations where the instinct to "just handle it" quietly costs more time than a structured approach would have taken from the start.

Part of what makes this hard is that there is rarely an obvious moment where it becomes urgent. Nothing breaks all at once; it just quietly gets a little more expensive, a little slower, or a little more confusing every month it goes unaddressed. By the time it becomes visible enough to force a conversation, the fix usually takes longer than it would have a year earlier.

A business does not need to solve this perfectly to see a real benefit — a rough, consistent version handled deliberately still beats a polished version that only gets attention once things have already gone sideways.

The concrete approach

Step 1

Write down the pitch exactly as currently said out loud, without editing it, as a baseline to improve from. The value here comes almost entirely from consistent follow-through rather than from a cleverer version of the idea. Skipping this step, or doing a half version of it, tends to look a lot like letting the pitch drift into a feature list instead of an outcome statement — a shortcut that feels harmless in the moment and shows up as a real cost later.

Time it

Time it — if it runs past thirty seconds, it is too long for a first introduction and needs cutting, not more detail. This is straightforward to describe and easy to skip under deadline pressure, which is exactly why most teams never actually get around to it. Skipping this step, or doing a half version of it, tends to look a lot like never timing the pitch and letting it run long — a shortcut that feels harmless in the moment and shows up as a real cost later.

Step 3

Cut every sentence that describes the product's features instead of the customer's outcome. None of this is complicated in theory — the difficulty is almost always in actually doing it consistently rather than understanding what to do. Skipping this step, or doing a half version of it, tends to look a lot like testing the pitch only on people already familiar with the industry — a shortcut that feels harmless in the moment and shows up as a real cost later.

Practice it on strangers outside the industry

Practice it on strangers outside the industry — at a networking event, on a flight — and note where they look confused. It costs very little to implement, which is precisely why it is worth prioritizing over a more expensive fix aimed at the same underlying problem. Skipping this step, or doing a half version of it, tends to look a lot like allowing every team member to invent a different version — a shortcut that feels harmless in the moment and shows up as a real cost later.

Step 5

Write down the final version and require the whole team to use the same one, adapted only in delivery, not content. The value here comes almost entirely from consistent follow-through rather than from a cleverer version of the idea. Skipping this step, or doing a half version of it, tends to look a lot like letting the pitch drift into a feature list instead of an outcome statement — a shortcut that feels harmless in the moment and shows up as a real cost later.

Where this goes wrong

• Letting the pitch drift into a feature list instead of an outcome statement.
• Never timing the pitch and letting it run long.
• Testing the pitch only on people already familiar with the industry.
• Allowing every team member to invent a different version.

How to tell it is actually working

Fewer questions come back later asking "wait, why did we do it this way?" because the reasoning was captured the first time, not just the outcome. It is a small, quiet change rather than a dramatic one, which is exactly why it is worth noting explicitly instead of assuming it happened on its own.

Bottom line

The businesses that handle this well are not the ones with the biggest marketing budgets — they are the ones who built a simple, repeatable process before they needed it under pressure.

Revisit whatever gets put in place here on a fixed schedule rather than assuming it will stay right indefinitely. The business, the team, and the market will all keep changing, and a process that fit perfectly a year ago is worth checking again rather than assuming it still does.

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