Why the Gaddie Pitch might be the most important style of startup pitch

Sales coaching expert Antony Gaddie invented a three part pitch you can master quickly and use every day, in every setting.

Why the Gaddie Pitch might be the most important style of startup pitch

Founders only have so many hours in the day, and hence, only so many opportunities to tell the world about their startup. Pitching on a stage in front of an audience is scary if you’re new to performing, so we tend to worry most about that kind of pitch, when actually, that’s the kind of pitch we have to do the least. Most of our opportunities to pitch are during social interactions with strangers; your Uber driver, the person whose dog is playing with yours at the dog park, someone you’ve just been asked to sit next to at a wedding reception.

You might not think any of these people are likely to be able to help your startup, but don’t be too hasty; your Uber driver may be completing their PhD in machine learning, the person at the dog park might be good friends with someone at a VC fund, and the wedding reception guest could be your next customer.

As soon as they ask, “So, what do you do?” the curtains have been raised and your window of opportunity has been thrown open.

But when someone asks, “So what do you do?” they don’t really care what you do, do they? They’re just making polite conversation. They may just be hoping that this won’t become a conversational dead-end, that you’re not a patent lawyer or a proctologist. So you have an ace up your sleeve, if you know how to play it well. You’re actually in an interesting profession - you’re a startup founder! 

Everybody thinks startup founders are interesting (even if they often aren’t) because popular culture is full of the latest crazy thing Elon Musk just said, everybody’s worried about AI taking our jobs. Here in Australia, Mike Cannon-Brookes seems to own all of Sydney’s best harbourside property and Melanie Perkins may become the most successful CEO in Australian history. They’re interesting startup founders; can you be interesting too?

All you have to do is live up to the startup founder reputation, and you’ll have them in the palm of your hands. But right now at the dog park, the stranger who’s just casually asked you what you do, definitely doesn’t want to be pitched-to in the ‘full 3-5min Demo Day’ sense of a pitch. Your strategy in this situation should be to deliver just enough of a pitch to surprise, interest and engage them with the goal of moving from a pitch to a conversation with your newly surprised, interested and engaged friend. How do you do that?

You hit them with your best Gaddie pitch! 

A Gaddie pitch is what you should use any time you don’t really have explicit consent to do a full pitch, time is constrained, and your goal is to lead the interaction from pitch to engaging conversation in the shortest possible time (because nobody feels like they’re being pitched to when they’re asking you questions).

Don’t care about strangers at the dog park? Well, the Gaddie pitch is also a much better pitch framework when you’re at a tech conference, and you’ve just run into an investor, and you’ve got less than a minute to capture their attention and make them want to hear more.

What is a Gaddie Pitch?

A Gaddie Pitch is easy and quick to deliver because it’s just three sentences. I’m just going to give you the start of each sentence (the rest of each sentence is up to you and your startup):

1. You know how…

2. Well, what we do is…

3. As a matter of fact…

Let’s break each of these sentences down so you know what to do next.

You know how…

Whether you’re at the dog park or the startup conference, it’s important to remember that you don’t really have permission to give a lengthy presentation, so the first part of a Gaddie pitch is designed to get the person you’re talking with to give you a little more consent. But when they say, “So, what do you do?” (as they might at the wedding reception) or “So, what are you working on?” (as they might at a startup conference) you’re actually not going to launch right into what you’re working on. First you’re going to build a bridge between where that person is right now, and what you’re working on.

So let’s call this part of the Gaddie pitch ‘the bridge’ - it’s the bridge between what they’ve asked you, and what you actually want to tell them. 

If you’re talking to an investor at a startup event, or a potential customer of your startup, they’re likely well-informed about either aspects of the startup industry or the problem you solve for the industry they’re in, so the sentence you use to complete “You know how…” should cover who your customers are and the problem you solve for those customers.

If you’re talking to a Uber driver or a stranger at the dog park, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t understand what you’re working on in detail, so it’s a better strategy to use a metaphor or an analogy about everyone’s everyday experience of the world, and find a way to tie that in to what your startup does.

For instance, you could say something like: 

“You know how, when you’re doing a home renovation, there’s a lot of communication between council, builders, tradespeople and architects? And there can be expensive delays when it takes too much time to get everybody on the same page?”

You know when you’ve nailed your ‘bridge’ when the person you’re talking to instinctively nods. 

(Tip: if you nod as you say the last part of your sentence it can often subconsciously prompt them to nod too, and the very act of nodding can prime someone to be more open to the next sentence of your Gaddie pitch).

Well, what we do is…

The middle section is where you take the consent you’ve received in the ‘bridge’ as permission to tell them, in as few words as possible, how your startup relates to the analogy or metaphor you just used.

That’s not the same as describing what your startup does. 

If I gave you enough time to explain what your startup does, you’d spend too much time, use too much jargon and buzzwords, and lose the consent you received during your bridge. You can’t help it (and neither can I when I’m standing in your shoes) we’re in way too deep, and will spend too much time explaining unnecessary details.

Instead, use the analogy or metaphor you just used in the bridge to explain in regular, everyday language, without buzzwords or jargon, to explain a little bit about what your startup does. Focus on the most surprising or unusual benefit or feature of what your startup does, like: 

“Well, what we do is, instead of you having to pay for a pest inspection report on the property you want to buy, if you use Pestio, the pest inspector pays you!” 

I call this section of the Gaddie pitch ’the box’ and I have a particular, magical kind of box in mind — the kind of box a magician uses when they appear to saw someone in half. The reason this trick is a classic is because you think you know what you’re going to see when the box is pulled apart. You think you know what to expect, thanks to the sense of ‘object permanence’ you developed around the age of two.

These days, with stricter workplace laws, startups have fewer opportunities to saw someone in half! But most startups rely on something new, something innovative, something different. Find that, and deliberately don’t explain it. Leave it hanging, like the pair of legs that seem to still be connected to the person in the box. Allow your audience to wonder how that’s even possible.

If you’ve picked the right thing (usually the most surprising or unusual benefit or feature) but not explained how your whole startup works, you’ve set the listener up perfectly; they’re now primed to start asking you questions that are bubbling up in their head. But first, there’s something else you need to hit them with.

As a matter of fact…

When I first heard about AirBnB, when it was still a half-formed idea coming out of the Y Combinator startup accelerator program, I was a sceptic, sure that very few people I knew would be interested in renting their spare bedroom or whole apartment to strangers on the internet. I was wrong, it turns out! But if you’d asked me at the time, I would have told you that I was absolutely certain that AirBnB would never work.

The same is true for most of us. Presented with something radically different enough to change the world, the easiest position, indeed, the default perspective for most people, is to be a sceptic and decide it’ll never work.

So you need a third part of your Gaddie pitch; a closing statement that surprises them with the progress you’ve already made. (You won’t be surprised that I refer to the third part of the Gaddie pitch as ‘the surprise’).

When you showed them the box, your audience was left wondering how it could be possible to separate someone’s legs from their body without carnage. Now you need to show them that not only can you separate them, you can also make them whole again, and here they are smiling and waving and returning to their seat.

In the surprise you must make it clear that, not only have you had the idea for your startup, but you’ve decided to commit to pursuing it, and have made some promising early progress.

How you define “early progress” is very much up to you but I recommend focusing on the metrics that matter most to you, at whatever stage your startup is at. Whether your listener agrees that your progress is “promising” or not is always calculated by the equation “progress = metrics x time” so a smaller amount of metric achieved can still be promising if it’s been achieved over a short period of time, like:

”In the past two weeks I’ve interviewed 60 potential customers and the results confirm my idea is worth pursuing” or:

”It’s only been a few months but we already have one company as a pilot customer and we have nearly $500k in potential revenue in our pipeline” (note: in my book, “a few months” can include anything up to 11 months - anything more than that and you should probably start describing it as a year!).

Why a great Gaddie pitch is crucial for startup founders

First impressions matter: research suggests it takes about seven seconds to form a first impression, and that it’s very hard to change a first impression once you’ve made it. A well-crafted Gaddie pitch allows you to make a strong, positive impression in a short amount of time, and move quickly from pitch to an engaging conversation with someone who is interested to learn more from you.

Remember, as soon as they’re asking you questions to try and solve the riddle of the box and understand the surprise, they don’t feel like they’re being pitched to anymore.

It’s so simple that once you’ve refined it, you’ll never stumble or stutter when you deliver it.

The process of creating a Gaddie pitch forces you to distill your business idea down to its core elements. It’s a ‘business haiku’ — giving just enough away to make your audience think about what they’ve heard and want to hear more.

It’s by far the most versatile form of pitch and can be adapted to various contexts. Whether you’re speaking to potential investors, customers, partners, or employees, the same pitch can be tailored to fit each different audience.

And if you’re not yet confident at other forms of pitching, a Gaddie pitch is easier to create, easier to master, and feels great when you get it right.

Want to know more? 

The Gaddie pitch was created by Melbourne-based entrepreneurial educator and coach Antony Gaddie. He teaches a Gaddie Pitch Masterclass that gets rave reviews, and the Gaddie Pitch is just one of his sales and persuasion frameworks.

Pitch Club is 29 July!

At our last Pitch Club, we worked on 'purposeful gestures' and 'cowboy stance' to help make you look and feel more comfortable on stage. Pitch Club is back at Soultrap 29 July but places are strictly limited to a maximum 20 people. Price includes an open cocktail bar and free bar food. Register now.