In one of the panels at WebSummit, a participant made a number of mistakes:
- She mentioned the One Dollar Shave Club video
- She went on to explain that the One Dollar Shave Club sold their first batch of inventory straight after the video went viral (“can you believe it?”)
- She went on to explain that the One Dollar Shave Club was acquired for (“how much was it again?”) one billion dollar for only hundred million dollar in sales
That was 2 minutes (be brief on panels) of a panel full of tech geeks who know this story (know your audience) with a hard to achieve advice: make your startup story as good as the One Dollar Shave Club video (the video, not the product).
When you start to mention a stale case example, and show that you are going to spend time explaining it, the audience knows what will follow in the next 5 minutes and you lost them. (The as an audience arriving at the bottom of a bullet point chart reading before you even finished reading out bullet point one aloud.
If you were not the first YouTube viewer who noticed the One Dollar Shave Club video an hour before you speak, use a more personal, original, case example. It is a great video though…