The Best Advice & Tips From Life’s A Pitch

If you missed our last Life’s A Pitch session, don’t worry! As always, your trusty friends at SlicedBrand have written an article summarizing the important points of the discussion, and here it is. 

The inaugural Life’s A Pitch session in September was an even bigger success than we were expecting, meaning we had a lot to live up to when we sat down to plan the second session. With the return of our all-star panel of media experts from top-tier publications and two new startups, the second Life’s A Pitch session was one to remember.

First, let’s introduce our two very different startups! Inspired by the experience of helping a friend mourn the death of his brother, LifeWeb 360’s team is rethinking digital memorials and bereavement, particularly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and unprecedented isolation. On the agri-tech side of things, Grow Computer is creating a cohesive suite of digital monitoring tools for grows of all kinds, with input from engineers, entrepreneurs, farmers, teachers, researchers, and craft cultivators.

And now to the advice given by our all-star panel:

Shona Ghosh, Senior Tech Editor at Insider, appreciated the personal side of things from our startups. She pointed out how “effective and impactful” walking a journalist through a particular individual’s experience and “and where the platform could potentially help [them].” Empathy, she said, can be an unexpected and interesting starting point.

Tech.eu Founder Robin Wauters emphasized the effectiveness of demonstrating how you’ve learned from your mistakes. “Admitting to [failure] and using that as a way to explain what you did well or what went right is a very good way to talk to journalists,” he said. “We all know startups are hard. But there's way too much bullshitting going on about it. If you're honest and straightforward about that, it really helps.”

Beyond the nuts and bolts of the individual startup pitches, our panelists spoke at length on the power of the exclusive. Shona Ghosh described them as a helpful addition to any pitch in catching a journalists’ attention. Martin SFP Bryant, Founder of Big Revolution and former Editor in Chief at The Next Web, cautioned startups against pitching a juicy exclusive story to the last minute, and recommended a planned pitching period of at least three weeks. 

While there’s no secret formula to a successful pitch, there are some hard and fast rules. Our panelists agreed that it’s safest to stick to their work email and stay out of the DMs when pitching. Feel free, however, to reply to a journalist’s tweet. Martin SFP Bryant noted that Twitter is the place to build “non-creepy” relationships with journalists – the kind that make journalists open your email and consider your pitch. We couldn’t agree more! Twitter is a key tool for any successful PR these days, but has to be used in the right way.

In every case, as Engadget Senior Editor Dan Cooper reminded the audience, tailoring your pitch to individual journalists is key. And a big funding number isn’t everything, certainly not to Engadget. “It's all about the product. Rarely would we ever talk about the funding and who's backing it, unless there is a specific reason or a specific connection as to why it's notable.”

This is just a fraction of all the amazing advice doled out by our panelists during the session. There’s more where that came from which you can find on our Twitter feed, and more to be had in sessions to come.

And don’t just take our word for it: Ali Briggs, CEO of LifeWeb 360, told us her whole team “truly [appreciated] the opportunity to receive such tailored feedback on how to tell our story” and that her founder friends who tuned in “were really impressed with the caliber of the panel you assembled.”

If you want to receive our top-notch and tailored feedback on telling your startup’s brand story, apply to be a part of our third session. We’re accepting applications to our next Life’s A Pitch on a rolling basis here: https://slicedbrand.com/lifesapitch