Pitch not getting traction? Try shortening it.

Sometimes the best pitch is the shortest. A one-sentence pitch that actually gets read is better than a 2-paragraph pitch that goes unread. I learned this lesson the hard way after pitching my startup to a number of websites that showcase new startups. The good news: when I used a super short pitch, not only did my startup get showcased, one of the sites even asked to license our technology for use on their website!

The Startup Pitch Grind

I came across a list of sites that feature startups and opened up a couple dozen browser tabs with the most promising ones. Each day, I would spend an hour or so crafting a pitch that I thought would resonate with the website’s interests. I researched what they’d previously covered and thought about how to frame my pitch. Sometimes these pitches (submitted through standardized forms) ended up being several paragraphs long.

Unfortunately, this time-consuming process yielded zero results. I never heard back from any of the sites — despite having won some prestigious startup awards and having tens of thousands of users around the world. Demoralized, I eventually decided to throw in the towel on this approach getting publicity.

Call It Quits?

But just as I was about to close the remaining handful of browser tabs, I decided to write one-sentence pitches and submit them to the last couple websites. The next day, I heard back from Springwise, an innovation-spotting website that’s been around since 2002. Not only did they want to feature BeeLine Reader as a hot new innovation — they also wanted to license our reading technology to make their website easier to read. We’ve just launched a site-wide integration with them, which puts us in front of their hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors. All this, from just one sentence!

Why Short Pitches Works

The people who read your pitches are busy. They’re not going to read a super-long pitch, so keeping it short is key. Of course, you have to include enough detail to capture their attention.

But realize that every sentence you add to your pitch increases the likelihood that your reader will take one look at your pitch and think: “TL;DR”

And in the spirit of concision, I’ll wrap this up here.

Join the discussion on Hacker News or Twitter.