{"id":78352,"date":"2014-05-14T15:22:58","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T19:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=78352"},"modified":"2024-07-01T15:59:50","modified_gmt":"2024-07-01T19:59:50","slug":"eight-tips-from-digital-innovators-schippers-04-and-fisher-06-steer-students-toward-perfect-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2014\/05\/14\/eight-tips-from-digital-innovators-schippers-04-and-fisher-06-steer-students-toward-perfect-pitch\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight tips from digital innovators Schippers \u201904 and Fisher \u201906 steer students toward perfect pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"

In business, you’re lucky to get 30 seconds to interest someone in the product or service you\u2019re selling.<\/p>\n

\"Jeremy<\/a>

Jeremy Fisher ’06 explains the art of the pitch as Ben Schippers ’04 looks on. Fisher was a guest speaker in Schipper’s Short Term course on digital innovation on May 6, 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Students taking a course on digital innovation, one of four new practitioner-taught Short Term courses<\/a> offered through the college\u2019s Purposeful Work Initiative, have spent many hours thinking about those 30 seconds, whittling down their own pitches with the help of instructor Ben
\nSchippers \u201904.<\/p>\n

Schippers, co-founder of software development startup Happy Fun Corp<\/a> in Brooklyn, N.Y., co-teaches the course with Happy Fun colleague Will Schenk.<\/p>\n

Schippers’ students develop fundamental coding and design skills while learning the finer points of entrepreneurship \u2014 including the all-important pitch, or \u201celevator speech\u201d \u2014 from professionals who have been on both sides of the negotiating table.<\/p>\n

On May 6, Schippers invited his friend Jeremy Fisher \u201906 to visit the class and help critique students\u2019 pitches.<\/p>\n

Fisher is something of an authority on digital innovation: His social media startup Wander was recently acquired by Yahoo! Inc. for more than $10 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here are Fisher and Schipper\u2019s tips for the perfect pitch:<\/p>\n

Fisher says:<\/h3>\n
\"Jeremy<\/a>

Jeremy Fisher \u201906 is co-founder and CEO of Wander, developer of the Days app and recently sold to Yahoo. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Know your audience<\/b>: \u201cIf someone in a bar asks what you do, you\u2019re going to tell them about your startup in a different way than if you were in a boardroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keep it simple<\/b>: \u201cDon’t make your pitch do too much. It’s about finding the core that makes your idea intriguing or attractive to people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leverage the absurd<\/b>: \u201cSometimes having an idea that sounds really preposterous, or kind of ridiculous, is actually a huge asset,\u201d because it gets people talking.<\/p>\n

Always be on message<\/b>: \u201cThe worst thing ever is not knowing what to say about your service. Having a clear value proposition \u2014 a really clear thing that you use it for \u2014 is effective. You need to be able to crystallize what you’re doing into a pitch that others can repeat for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Find your hook<\/b>: \u201cInvestors want to know how they’re going to pitch you as an entrepreneur. It\u2019s understanding your personal narrative and how that fits into the story of your company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schippers says:<\/h3>\n
\"jjjjj\"<\/a>

Ben Schippers ’04 is co-founder of tech start-up Happy Fun Corp. He and Fisher became friends while students at Bates. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Get to the point<\/b>: \u201cWhen you say \u2018like\u2019 or \u2018whatever\u2019 or these really bogus vanilla words, it\u2019s just noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Avoid lazy comparisons<\/b>: If you start comparing your product to an existing service \u2014 \u201c\u2018It\u2019s like Pinterest, but\u2019 or \u2018It\u2019s like Facebook, but\u2019 \u2014\u00a0 you\u2019ve just lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bring the energy<\/b>: \u201cI like it when people come to my office and they’re really, really, really excited, and they figure out how to get me excited. Draw your audience in and figure out how to get them as excited as you are about your idea. Think of that as a No. 1 priority. That requires a huge amount of confidence and focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fisher adds a final bit of pitch wisdom for all career-minded students: \u201cRealize that you\u2019re always pitching, even to your classmates \u2014 even when you\u2019re on campus going to parties, hanging out with friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou never know which people are going to be in positions of power over you, under you, next to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He shares a story from his time at Morgan Stanley when he learned his high school friend\u2019s mother would be his new boss.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank God I made a good impression on her when I was a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a new Short Term course on digital innovation, students make pitches to alumni who’ve been on both sides of the negotiating table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":78524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[7,44],"tags":[10428,12356,10403,10845],"class_list":["post-78352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-enewsletter","tag-ben-schippers-04","tag-center-for-purposeful-work","tag-practitioner-taught-courses","tag-short-term"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78352"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78503,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78352\/revisions\/78503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}