Trevin Chow

TechCrunch recently launched Elevator Pitches, which is a sub-site featuring 60 second video clips of entrepeneurs pitching their startup idea.   Additionally, viewers can vote on ideas and even leave comments.  Utter genius! 

I’ve gone through about a half dozen videos so far and here are my initial thoughts:

1. If you can’t describe your business model and value in 60 seconds, then you’ve got real problems.
2. Most pitches are fantastically bad.  These guys need to both work on their public speaking skills and really go back to the drawing board and re-think some of their ideas.

A good business idea is more than just writing code.  You have to not only provide real value, but that value has to be understandable by customers.  The acid test is really the 60 second pitch – if it can’t be explained in 60 seconds, how are your customers ever going to understand it’s value?

So far, the absolute worst pitch video of the 6 I watched has got to be for Meebo:

Meebo is described as “live interaction for the web” and “it’s growing super fast and a fun company”.  I’m a big Meebo fan, but seriously, is that description even understandable?  It’s IM through your web browser buddy, geez.

Do yourself a favor and check out InstaCalc.  It’s a very clever idea on the age old calculator.  Not only does it do computations on the fly, but the page loads freaking fast and you can share your calculations with others. It even support charting, like bar and pie charts.  Best part is that it supports variables, making ‘complex’ calculations easy to follow.

For example, check out the YouTube acquisition analysis or a comparison of the Zune vs the iPod.

Check the feature tour out here to see the power that’s available (you will be surprised at the richness of functionality).

Go go InstaCalc!