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Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

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Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#31
post #29

As an aside here, I watched startup school on justin.tv (all of it) here in Australia on the Monday morning. Greg McAdoo's talk was excellent and included a few words on the elevator pitch; only I missed something. At one point he used Cisco as an example of an elevator pitch, first he said what they might have done. Then he showed a slide and said, "well I don't even have to introduce this...". Only, I couldn't read…

"Cisco networks networks" (or something highly similar).

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#32
post #29

As an aside here, I watched startup school on justin.tv (all of it) here in Australia on the Monday morning. Greg McAdoo's talk was excellent and included a few words on the elevator pitch; only I missed something. At one point he used Cisco as an example of an elevator pitch, first he said what they might have done. Then he showed a slide and said, "well I don't even have to introduce this...". Only, I couldn't read…

"Cisco networks networks" (or something highly similar).

Cool - thank you. I was expecting something more like, 'we are the Internet' - maybe that came later on.

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#34
post #5
post #3

Elevator pitch for my poetry app (not a startup/business): The Internet is encouraging more poets to write and share, but it is not helping them collaborate and improve and most apps wall up an author's content. Clarity and conciseness. Hope I didn't violate my answer to the first one ;-) Of course, almost no one gives a toss about poetry anyway.

Untrue! I give several tosses! I'm working on an integrated touring tool for spoken word poets. It will allow them to rate venues, add tour dates & locations, map their trip, easily find bus or plane tickets between destinations (here's a place where I could work in Wondrbar...), and publish their schedules to various social networking apps. I also want to add a booking mechanism for the people who run poetry venues,…

Seems like it would apply to lots of other fields than spoken word poets-- bands/performers/speakers of any stripe could use such a tool.

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to let you know, this pitch totally worked for me. As soon as I finished reading your pitch I totally clicked the link to find out more. I hope you release soon. :-)

Are you interested in beta testing? :-)

I am. Actually, I keep checking your HN submissions for it.

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#39

Six word pitch for tarsnap ( http://www.tarsnap.com ): Online backups for the truly paranoid. Longer version: Security is hard. Governments and organized crime are getting increasingly involved in identity theft and corporate espionage. Tarsnap is a backup system designed from the ground up to keep your data out of the hands of the US government (and anyone else who might want to steal it).

Like the pitch but it reads - Backups for Criminals - to me. Isn't it possible to encrypt already and then backup?

Re: Ask YC: Give Us Your Best Elevator Pitch

#40
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be a bit contrarian and say it still needs more work. I think - perhaps the business people you are targetting find themselves nodding when you say "truly paranoid", and "out of the hands of the US government", but... I think you're walking a fine line, where some may look and say "nah, I'm not one of those guys". You'd probably have to go around asking people to get an idea that's more than just guesswork.

Keep in mind that I'm not aiming for the entire online backup market. I'm aiming for a small (but growing) corner of the market: people who care about security. Really, I'm just playing to my own strengths here -- I can't compete in the "shiny GUI" market, but security is something I'm really good at.

All the same, I'd suggest, for instance, omitting the phrase "the hands of the US government". It's generally found in the context of conversations I don't want to be a part of, and the people that it appeals to will substitute it for "anyone that might want to steal it".
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