Abstract:

The entrepreneurial pitch is the action that allows an audience, made up mainly of business angels, venture capitalist, potential investors, to analyse and judge a project and a person (the entrepreneur) in a short time (from 30 seconds, to two to five minutes). 5 golden minutes in which the entrepreneur must be able to show his/her best version and the capabilities and attractiveness of the idea, the project and the team. Due to the current situation caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, in which teleworking and online meetings are more common than offline meetings, entrepreneurs or students who are studying the possibility of developing a business project have had to adapt to the situation and continue their journey by presenting their initiative in a relatively novel circumstance, virtual events. This is a great challenge because most entrepreneurs or students have not received public speaking training and even less virtual public communication, using the online channel.

For this reason, this article aims to provide a practical and easily applicable basis for entrepreneurs or students to prepare their pitch taking into account the different rhetorical, structural, linguistic and technical features necessary to persuade an audience. Consequently, the main result of the study is a suggested template, a practical guide for entrepreneurs, specifically in the initial phase, to prepare their pitch to present it online and live.

To carry out the guide, 4 main topics have been analysed with corresponding subsections related to the creation of the pitch: the pitch structure, the content (information provided and linguistic features), the form (technical aspects and non-verbal communication) and the perceived passion. To achieve these results, two world-renowned public speaking or pitching techniques in the world of entrepreneurship have been considered: the Kawasaki structure and the structure used in Dragons Den or Shark Tank. An experiment has been carried out with 20 entrepreneurial projects (10 male and 10 females, with projects in an initial phase). A previous training to pitching was facilitated, with half of the group following the Kawasaki structure, and the other half Dragons Den. Finally, a jury made up of 5 experts from the communication and entrepreneurship sector, have analysed the projects allowing to order and evaluate all the aspects that are habitually part of the online pitch. The analysis of the best entrepreneurial pitches resulted in a final practical template for entrepreneurs and students.

This study goes beyond the simple description of what is considered basic in a digital entrepreneurial pitch for projects in the initial phase, since it provides the entrepreneur with theoretically grounded and empirically tool for the preparation of an online speech. Currently, with the new normality and the growth of digital entrepreneurial communication, entrepreneurs need new training, tools and specific guidance to be able to present online and achieve the same result as the offline/traditional channel allows. The result of this research hopes to be of great use in the entrepreneurial and educational field to improve the digital communication of the presentations for entrepreneurs or potential entrepreneurs. What makes a great digital pitch? As simple to ask as complex to carry out, a new challenge to solve for the world of both entrepreneurship and education.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial pitch, communication, on-line, skills training.