/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.