Pitch Coach

---
name: pitch-coach
description: Drafts and critiques business pitches, investor decks, mission statements, and personal pitches using the 7-part pitch framework, S.H.I.T., and the six-word test. Use when the user is writing a VC pitch, a deck narrative, a "tell me about yourself," a LinkedIn bio, a one-pager, a founding story, or any pitch about themselves or their company. Triggers on "pitch," "deck," "investor," "mission statement," "tell me about yourself," "founding story," "LinkedIn bio," "elevator pitch."
---

# Pitch coach

Source: `points/frameworks.md` (pitch and S.H.I.T. sections), `points/kramon-master.md` section VIII.

## Two pitch modes

This skill handles both:
- **Company pitches** — VC, customer, journalist
- **Personal pitches** — LinkedIn bio, "tell me about yourself," cover letter, founding-story essay

The frameworks overlap. S.H.I.T. applies to both.

## The 7-part pitch (companies)

1. **What it does** — plain English, one sentence, grandmother test
2. **Differentiation** — what's already out there and why you're different
3. **Customer examples and endorsements** — specific names, specific numbers
4. **Market size and funding** — TAM, dollars raised, runway
5. **Superhero story** — why *you* are the one to do this
6. **News hook** — why this is timely
7. **Bigger trend** — connect to the wave (especially if you're small)

## The six-word test

Summarize the product in six words. If you can't, you don't know it well enough yet.

Examples:
- *"Edited Pulitzer winners. Now teaching business leaders."* (Kramon's bio)
- *"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."* (Hemingway)

If the user can't pass this test, work on it before anything else.

## S.H.I.T. framework

Apply to both company and personal narratives:

- **Simple** — especially if your background is complex, simplify
- **Heroic** — position as protagonist; will they prevail? Stay tuned
- **Inevitable** — on the right side of history
- **Timely** — doing this *now* for a reason

## Mission-statement template (4 sentences)

1. *"This problem is a dire threat, even if most people don't know it."*
2. *"My company is developing the most elegant solution: [how it works]."*
3. *"We might fail, but the mission is so important we must try."*
4. *"Call to action: [specific ask — invest, join, legislate, hire me]."*

## Personal pitch — extra rules

LinkedIn bios and "tell me about yourself" answers have their own failure modes:

- **Don't let the bots brand you.** If you don't define your brand, someone else will.
- **Wall of shame** — kill these:
  - *"I'm left brain and right brain"*
  - *"I build and scale to maximize impact"*
  - *"I'm drawn to complex problems"*
  - *"At the intersection of strategy, product, and execution"*
- **Tell stories, not bullet points** — even in a bio
- **Pick a thesis** — what do you believe about your industry that others don't?

## Delivered pitches — two extra rules

When the pitch will be spoken to a room (demo day, class vote, investor meeting) rather than read:

- **Repeat the product name.** The audience remembers one or two things per pitch; make the name one of them. Say it in the open, at the solution reveal, in the demo, and in the close — so when the voting sheet or partner meeting comes, the name recalls the pitch. Three to five repetitions across seven minutes is deliberate; more is a tic.
- **Open on a person, close on the same person.** Lead with a named persona living the problem ("Tony, an international student from Milan, can't rent an apartment — no US credit history"), not the technology. Explain the mechanism only through what it does for that person. Close by returning to them transformed. If the audience needs background knowledge to understand a slide, the slide is too technical for a live pitch — that language belongs in the written plan.

## Consultants — the special case

The stigma is real. Elon, Vinod, Mark Andreessen all say they don't hire consultants. The perception: *"PowerPoint jockeys"* who empower, enable, and strategize but don't execute.

In every pitch, talk about projects you took **from concept through execution**. *"This is what it looked like on launch day, and I did it."*

## Mode 1 — Draft from scratch

Walk through:
1. Six-word test (do this first; everything else follows)
2. S.H.I.T. — write one sentence per letter
3. The 7-part structure (or 4-sentence mission template for short pitches)
4. Cut to length

## Mode 2 — Critique an existing pitch

Flag:
- Can't pass the six-word test
- Buzzword cluster ("at the intersection of," "driving innovation")
- Resume bullets where stories should be
- No "why now"
- No "why you"
- Missing the bigger trend
- Generic ("I'm passionate about complex problems")

## When you finish

Hand back: (a) the rewritten pitch, (b) three alternative six-word summaries, (c) the S.H.I.T. breakdown one-line-per-letter so the user can use it in interviews.