Transforming your innovations from great ideas to viable and growing business is an enormous challenge, with correspondingly enormous risk and reward. You need to have not only a thoroughly validated value proposition but also to be able to communicate it clearly.

The Perfect Pitch methodology used throughout the Plano & Simple courses will help you to pressure test every aspect of your value proposition. In the process, you will develop clear, concise and compelling ways to communicate it to your stakeholders, from investors to customers. 

Falling in love with your innovation is an occupational hazard for innovators everywhere. Your essential stakeholders - whether customers, investors, sponsors, partners, employees, etc. - are likely to have very different perspectives from yours.

Getting clarity on what matters to them will help you in developing successful strategies and tactics, as well as communicating them. "Know Your Stakeholders" focuses on understanding their motivations to help them get as excited by your vision as you are.

Your stakeholders - customers, investors, etc. - will only invest their money, time and resources in your innovation if they perceive that the problem you are solving is important and significant. Most innovators focus on what their innovation does. To engage stakeholders, you must focus on why they should care. 

This course helps you to answer Question 01: Who cares?, the first of the 10 Questions Every Pitch Should Answer.

In the previous course, you "Built Your Case" for strong demand for a new solution to a significant problem. Your stakeholders now need to know what your innovation does to impact that problem. The focus is on what it does, not how it works.

This course helps you to answer Question 02: What do you do? of the 10 Questions Every Pitch Should Answer.

Having an innovative solution that has the potential to "Show Your Impact" is a great start, but it is just the start. Your innovation also has to be better, faster and cheaper than the alternatives.

CAUTION! You can't be the best in every dimension. But you can deliver the best combination of benefits that your users need and want.

This course helps you to answer Question 03: Why will you win? of the 10 Questions Every Pitch Should Answer.

"Being the Best" today is one thing.

Sustaining that advantage over time is quite another! You need to protect your advantage over time by erecting legal, strategic, and tactical barriers to entry against your competitors.

This course helps you to answer Question 04: How will you stay ahead? of the 10 Questions Every Pitch Should Answer.

Stakeholders want solutions. Too often, the innovative solutions promised in pitches fail to materialize in the real world. This fact makes most stakeholders very skeptical.

So far, you have made exciting claims about the market opportunity, secret sauce, and sustainable competitive advantage. The next step is to Validate Your Claims with substantiated data, initial revenue, or both.

This course is designed to help you answer Question 05: Does it work? from the 10 Questions Every Pitch Should Answer.

No matter how big an impact your innovation can make, nor how much better it is at solving an important problem, people won't buy it unless they know about it.

Social media makes announcing your products and services to the world relatively easy... for everyone. You need a thoughtful strategy to get heard above the noise so that you can reach your high priority customers, efficiently and cost-effectively.

This course helps you to answer Question 06: How will you make money? from the 10 Questions Every Pitch Should Answer.

Your business model is the integration of the tactics and strategies of your business plan. The next step is to quantify its projected results, to tell the same story in numbers that you have just told in words. While it is impossible to be predict the future perfectly, you can reflect the best data you have available today in those projections, showing likely trends and outcomes. 

Financial statements are the language of business. Becoming fluent in them will serve you well in communicating with investors and in managing and growing your organization.

This course focuses on helping you to answer Question 07: How much will you make? from the 10 Questions Every Pitch Should Answer.

In the preceding courses, we have addressed functional aspects of your value proposition (marketing, secret sauce, competition, intellectual property, proof of concept, business model, and financial projections, primarily from the perspective of your many stakeholders. Before we finish up with your vision and "ask", we need to highlight the people who make it all work, your team.

Use this course to help answer Question 08: Why you? from the 10 Questions Every Pitch Should Answer.

Congratulations! You have developed your value proposition and the tools to communicate effectively with any of your stakeholders. You have curated the accomplishments of your co-founders and highlighted their strengths while still being aware of what is needed to grow your team. Our next step is to have a smart, aggressive plan for executing your value proposition to reach your vision.

This course will help you to answer Question 09: What will you do (if I give you money)? from the 10 Questions Every Pitch Should Answer.

You have learned in the previous "Perfect Pitch, Plano & Simple" courses to Captivate your stakeholders with your exciting opportunity, to Validate your claims with data, and to Motivate them to take the action you want. All that remains is to tell them what that action is, to "Make Your Ask" in a way that will help you to get a specific answer. "Yes", "Tell me more" and even, "No, thanks" are all infinitely more valuable responses than, "Nice job, best of luck!"

This course addresses Question 10: How much will it cost?, the last of the 10 Questions Every Pitch Should Answer.

Congratulations on being selected to pitch for an Ignition Grant!

Your pitch to the judging panel is crucial to winning an award. My "Perfect Pitch" process and coaching are here to help you to engage and educate the judges. Please schedule a (fully sponsored) 1-on-1 coaching session with me to reframe your innovation and supporting value proposition into a clear, concise and compelling pitch that meets the criteria of the Ignition judges.

Welcome to the online version of the CapsuleT Workshop! I'm looking forward to working with you.  

Welcome to your workbook companion to the online workshop on 27 November 2023! This intensive workshop touches on every major aspect of your value proposition in just 4 hours (12:00 - 16:00 CET) and teaches you how to communicate it to the Valuation Board and other key audiences. 

You are strongly encouraged to submit "Your Baseline Elevator Pitch" prior to the workshop as you will significantly enhance the value of the content and the exercises by having a version to edit instead of creating it in real time. 

Welcome to your workbook companion to the online workshop on 30 & 31 October 2023! This intensive workshop covers every major aspect of your value proposition in just 12 hours (17:00 - 21:00 EET on both days) and teaches you how to communicate it to investors, customers, judges, and other key audiences. 

To get the most value out of the workshop, it is imperative that you do some preparation. Please start by submitting "Your Baseline Elevator Pitch" and then review at least the Overview pages in this workbook before the workshop.