I had 30 seconds. I got cut off at 10.
My company CEO raised a hand.
“Start over. What is this? Why now?”
I was nine words in friends. I had a deck. I had the energy. I love presenting, in case you did not catch that but, I did not havea pitch.
That day, I learned something brutal: the biggest ideas fail in the first 30 seconds because most people (aka me) lead with what they built instead of why anyone should care.
I went back. I rewrote it. Eleven f***ing times.
By version twelve, I could pitch it before the next Slack notification. I could sell it to execs, heck even VCs, and anyone standing next to me in an elevator.
Now I coach PMs, founders, and teams to do the same.
Why 30 seconds still matter
The original elevator pitch? In 1854, Elisha Otis hoisted himself up five floors and cut the rope. He fell a few inches. Then stopped. He had just demonstrated his safety brake. Crowd went wild.
Today, you’re not in a showroom. You’re in a scroll feed. Attention is gone before your third word hits. People remember the thing that made them pause. Not the feature. Not the roadmap. The pain.
That’s why your pitch has to be less than 30 seconds. Not to be efficient. To be unforgettable.
The 30 second framework: CORE + M
After rewriting mine eleven times, I built a structure that works for anything — a product, a project, a portfolio, a person.
It works in under 75 words. It works aloud. And it works better than anything I’ve seen in a boardroom, an interview, or a demo call.
What bad looks like
Let’s be honest. This is what 90% of elevator pitches sound like:
“We built an innovative end-to-end automotive solution that leverages immersive tech to reimagine engagement.”
No user. No pain. No result. No reason to care.
Keep the jargon out of this. ALWAYS! I will personally come and tap your head if you don’t. Use this rule — If I can swap in ‘toothpaste’ and nothing breaks, it’s not a pitch. It’s a buzzword salad. And babe, you are on trouble.
What good looks like
I have taken examples of things that you would know and have applied the CORE + M framework to it. You can see how this lands differently below:
Startup
“Teams spend hours drafting content and chasing the right words. OpenAI’s tools reduce content generation time by 30% to 60%, helping teams go from idea to publish significantly faster.”
(Forrester TEI Study)
Product
“Dating apps often struggle with user retention. Bumble’s approach, allowing women to make the first move, contributes to a 12.4% 30-day user retention rate, outperforming many competitors.”
(SimilarWeb, 2023)
Feature
“Remote teams struggle to recreate the energy of in-person whiteboarding. Miro’s sticky-note voting feature helps teams prioritize ideas visually, reducing decision time and boosting engagement.”
(Miro product docs)
This isn’t theory. I’ve used this with mentees prepping for PM interviews, founders prepping, and with execs myself. It holds up.
From deck bloat to a clear yes
My first pitch was all solution. No problem. No user. Just a wall of technical ambition.
By round five, I had added data but lost the story.
By round ten, I had speed but no teeth.
Round eleven? It took 22 seconds:
“Growing e-commerce OEMs want flexibility in how they design their websites. Our platform gives them no-code configurability, cutting launch time by 50% and unlocking 5x in upsell revenue.”
The CEO nodded. There were follow-ups. We got the approval to proceed.
Make your own: 5 rows and a timer
Draw five rows:
- Customer
- Obstruction
- Remedy
- Effect
- Metric
Write one sentence per box.
Put it all together.
Read it aloud.
If it takes longer than 30 seconds, it is too long.
Proceed towards shortening it. Succinct is the keyword here!
Pro tip: If you have more, you are getting distracted. So, write all of them and stack rank them. It will even teach you about ruthless prioritization. Focus on getting to that number 1. 1 customer, 1 really big obstruction, 1 key remedy, 1 magnificent effect and 1 heck of a killer metric!
One last thing: remix it if you want
Hate the name? Rename it.
Want to add a final call to action (CTA) instead of a metric? Go for it.
Just follow this rule: If it doesn’t land in 30 seconds, you’re explaining. Not pitching.
The best pitches don’t walk you through a forest. It intrigues. The best pitch is like dropping a rock in the water and letting you feel the ripple.
