We have just completed one more valuable day at the TINC “superschool” for startups.

Our first take from today’s Lean Startup Workshop with Tristan Kromer is “embrace and celebrate failure”.

Positive aspects of failure

It might sound strange that failure can be considered as a positive thing, but most success stories are born out of failure. For example in sales or when pitching to investors or potential customers or partners, your failure to get across your value proposition so that your audience comprehends it, is a very valuable experience. It provides you with a clear message that your value proposition is either vague or does not specifically address the customer pains, or the investor expectations.

Comprehension-test your pitch

The second take from today´s workshop is a simple but effective technique that we have learned. It provides you with the right tool to make your pitch more powerful and comprehensible. What you do is to:

1. Simply run your pitch by somebody that could be regarded as a representative of your target audience.
2. Ask them to run back the pitch by you in their own words. Can this somebody easily and correctly convey back the message in the way that you intended, then you have passed the comprehension test, otherwise you need to rework your pitch and try again and again.
3. Each time you run it by different people. You should run as many times as possible until your pitch is spot on before you try it live on investors and potential partners.

Stay tuned for more of our Silicon Valley experiences and daily advice.

/Falah and Dimitris