For most investors, your pitch summary will be their first impression of your business - it will determine whether or not an investor clicks on your pitch or moves onto the next investment opportunity.
Your pitch summary is visible from the investment opportunities page and is regularly included in our emails - so it’s important to get it right.
When writing your pitch summary remember you’re promoting the opportunity to invest in your business, not promoting your product or service to prospective customers. An effective pitch summary will clearly communicate what your business does, the problem it’s trying to solve, as well as examples of traction or opportunities.
You’ve only got 300 characters to get it right, so here are our top tips for drafting a killer pitch summary:
Get some inspiration
Check out the live investment opportunities on Crowdcube to help you get a feel for what you think makes a good pitch summary. Is it clear what the business does? Have they given you enough information to want to find out more?
Write it in the third person
Your pitch summary should be written in the third person, so from Crowdcube’s perspective rather than your own. This means avoiding terms like ‘we’, ‘I’ and ‘our’ and using ‘the company’, ‘it’, ‘the business’ instead.
Start with the most compelling fact about your business
Your pitch summary will always be accompanied by your company name and/or logo, so avoid repetition of your company name whilst ensuring the most pertinent information about your business is covered first.
Think: so what?
You have a limited character count so ensure there is value in every word. Use figures and data to qualify your statements and stick to the facts as every claim will need to be verified. Don’t use superlatives, hyperbole and avoid industry jargon or abbreviations.
Back up key points with data
Where possible qualify and back up any key points with data or detailed information. For example, rather than saying your products are listed in a number of stores, say how many and if they are listed in well-known stores, include some of the names - to really help illustrate the point to investors.
Check for typos and grammatical errors
First impressions count so check and check again that your pitch summary is free of typos, grammatical errors and random capitalisation. You can also use a free tool like Grammarly for the final check.
We've included a couple of examples below to highlight the above points:
Good example 1:
With over 400 stockists in 20 countries, including Booths, Harrods, and Whole Foods, Raw Halo is an award-winning raw chocolate brand. Revenue to date is £380k, and the business is returning to Crowdcube to raise investment for their expansion into national supermarkets.
Bad example:
Raw Halo is a popular chocolate brand sold in many shops and people love us because we make healthier chocolate. The industry is large and growing and the team have plenty of past retail experience.
Good example 2:
Striving to be the Airbnb for boat chartering, Borrow A Boat is an online platform designed to allow anyone to hire a boat, and for any boat owner to easily rent out their idle vessel. With 13,000 boats in more than 50 countries now listed, the team are now raising to expand marketing activities.
Bad example:
Borrow A Boat want people to be easily able to hire a boat anywhere in the world because lots of people have a boating hobby, particularly on holiday. People can go to our website and really easily book use of one of our thousands of boats.
