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Elon Musk Pitching Strategy
Elon Musk's unique pitching strategy has proved very successful for him over the years. While the strategy failed him at the start of his career (he failed to raise for his first company), as the scale of his projects has grown, the strategy has not only helped him raise but allowed him to build his personal brand and reputation.
As more companies begin to overcome longstanding technological challenges its’s worth considering whether your company might be better served abandoning the traditional method of pitching and adopting Elon Musk’s strategy.
So let’s walk through it…
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Explain a massive problem - Musk's companies always aim to solve a huge problem: Climate Change (Tesla), Planetary Expansion (SpaceX), Free Speech (X), and Financial Freedom (Paypal). Having a huge problem or at least being able to frame your company as solving a huge problem is key to making this strategy work; this is also likely one of the reasons he struggled to do it with his first company, which was just digital mapping.
Explain the obstacle - Musk takes a long time to explain why the problem exists and what is preventing us from solving it. This includes 20-30 minute explanations about how electric motors, batteries and spaceships work, unlike other pitches, which jump from the problem to the solution. He has innovated by actually building a barrier to solving the world-threatening problem and making 60% of his pitch dedicated to ensuring that the audience understands how complex and difficult this problem is. Psychologically he is combining the Why Now and Problem slides here to create a super scary villain that is preventing us from a world where the massive problem doesn’t exist.
Advancement - Musk always then explains some type of technological advancement that he/his companies have created to overcome the obstacle that has long prevented humanity from solving the problem. Instead of a traditional solution then he actually presents some sort of technology that allows the future to be different from the past. This is why he’s seen as someone who brings about innovation or change, he pitches himself as that person.
This way of pitching is something that takes significant practice, and you need to get comfortable with 70% of your speech being about problems and challenges, NOT about solutions, features, and opportunities. By flipping that script however you build the type of loyalty and connection to your solution that Musk has been able to achieve through his own companies.
Would you use this strategy when pitching? |
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