Pitching your idea

BBC2 TV programme Dragon's Den has helped to popularise the pitch - the opportunity to snappily sell your business idea.

People often refer to an elevator pitch. The scenario is that a potential investor gets into a lift with you - and you have the time it takes for the lift to get to the fifth floor to convince them that it's worth them finding out more about your business.

The aim is to capture their imagination, and give them key facts about your business proposal. We've put some more notes on the document below.

Download the_elevator_pitch.doc

There are also some good tips on pitching on the Dragon's Den website.

We run this session at the end of our start-up training for a number of reasons:

Passionate social entrepreneurs are prone to waffle. Preparing an elevator pitch can help you to focus on the benefits that your social business can bring, and to keep things snappy.

You'll probably need to pitch your idea in the future to investors, funders or customers. Doing it with us can prepare you for doing it for real in the future.

There's time to chat with the panel after your pitch, and in the past a number of entrepreneurs have made good contacts at the Launch Pad.

Here's what the Yorkshire Evening Post thought about our Launch Pad the first time we did it.

You won't get your pitch 100% right first time, but we're confident that you'll have a good go, and will be better prepared to do it next time.

To inspire you here are a couple of memorable pitches from TV's Dragon's Den - Ling Valentine and Levi Roots. Here's one to make you laugh as well.