Tailor
The same pitch for an investor, a customer, and a teammate is the same pitch for none of them. Same six questions, different emphasis.
Pitching is a forcing function
The reason this workshop ends with a pitch is that pitching is the test. If you can stand up and explain your product in five minutes — clearly, specifically, without arm-waving — then you’ve done the rest of the work. If you can’t, you have a homework problem to go fix.
The pitch isn’t the marketing of the product. It’s the diagnostic.
This is why we don’t teach pitching as a separate craft. The pitch is just your CIRCLES walk-through, compressed. Six questions cover everything.
The six questions of a five-minute pitch
- Name the company or solution. What do you call it? One word is fine.
- Introduce the team. Who’s building it, in one line per person. If it’s just you, say so.
- Who you’re helping. The customer profile from Lesson 02 — the specific one, not the broadest one.
- The problem. The root cause from Lesson 01 — the answer at Why 5, not the surface complaint.
- Your solution. The pick from Lesson 04 — one solution, not a menu.
- Why it’s better. One specific advantage. Not three. One.
You can answer all six in 90 seconds if you’ve done the workshop. The reason a pitch ever runs to five minutes is that the pitcher hasn’t.
Three rules of delivery
Strong, positive language
“We’re building” not “we’re trying to.” “We help X do Y” not “we’re hoping to help X do Y.” Hedges train the listener to discount you.
Short
Five minutes is a budget, not a target. If you can land the pitch in three, do that — the bonus two minutes are now Q&A and you’ve gained, not lost.
The under-rehearsed mistake
Every first-timer pitches without rehearsing. They’ve written the answers, they’ve read them once, and they assume that’s enough. It isn’t. Read it out loud, time it, and edit ruthlessly. The version you read silently is twice as long as the version that lands when spoken.
Cheap rehearsal loop
- Stitch your six answers into one paragraph.
- Read it out loud, into a phone recording.
- Listen back at 1.5x speed. The parts that sound like filler at 1x sound like garbage at 1.5x — cut them.
- Repeat until you can deliver it in under three minutes without notes.
Operator story · Lesson 6
From Alon’s notebook
A mentee’s first pitch edited live in 10 minutes to one that landed. Suggested hook: the specific edit that made the difference — usually one word swap or one cut sentence — and the moment the audience leaned in.
[OPERATOR STORY — Lesson 6]Final assignment
Section 06 of the workbook. Stitch your six answers into one paragraph. Read it out loud. Time it. Cut. The first version of the pitch you can deliver under three minutes without notes is your real pitch — everything before that was a draft.
You finished the workshop. Go ship something.
Assignment · Section 06
Draft your five-minute pitch
Sign in to save your answers.Six questions. Three rules of delivery. Read aloud, time, cut.
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