Ditch the elevator pitch

Today, the virtues of the elevator pitch have been codified by Silicon Valley. Get accepted to a startup accelerator and you’ll be drilled in the art of the two-and-a-half-minute pitch — because that’s all the time you’ll have to sell your life’s work to a potential investor. That’s fucking ridiculous.

The actual Hey World Jason Fried blog is good – I also enjoyed this piece on developed and embryonic features. As for elevator pitches, it’s probably useful being able to describe what something is for in a few words as it may help strip out all the organisational bullshit, and try and make you see it from a user’s perspective.

But the whole notion that you have a minute to sell something to an essentially disinterested business bod is absurd, a hangover from the stupid apprenticisation of work that we’ve had to pretend we agree with for years.