Elevator Ideas

I often watch people struggle with elevator pitches—the last time was when I helped as a mentor during a Startup Weekend bootcamp in Wrocław. As an entreprenuer, how do you pack your vision into a pitch that’s less than a minute long?

The answer: you don’t. You simplify the idea instead.

Simple ideas make pitching easier and don’t require unnecessary compression of information. For example, here’s our first elevator pitch for Ada:

Ada is an AI-powered personal assistant who will help you rent your next apartment.

It changed since then but it was a really simple concept: here’s someone who handles apartment hunting for you so that you can enjoy life instead.

That’s it. You don’t have to explain more because there’s just not much else to say. It doesn’t mean that what we do is shallow—if you catch somebody’s attention, you can always add more later. There are also other benefits. The simplest ideas usually have the largest markets so there’s no need to mention market size. Simple is relatable, too. People just get it.

Find an elevator idea first—the elevator pitch will handle itself just fine.