What makes an effective pitch? Exploring the role of self-presentations of new ventures in connecting with external stakeholders

Details

Supervisors

Gailly, Benoît

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Newly emerging ventures, often referred to as start-ups, are heavily dependent on the support of external stakeholders. In order to convince stakeholders to provide their support, start-ups are often using a presentation of themselves and their plans, which are commonly referred to as “pitches”. The first objective of the thesis is to synthesize the findings of previous studies to create a state-of-the-art for factors that make an “effective pitch”. The findings point towards the “pitch’s” central objective of convincing the audience of the “legitimacy” of the endeavor. “Legitimacy” can be achieved by convincing external stakeholders of the entrepreneur’s personal qualities (preparedness, passion, creativity and coachability) as well as establishing a narrative of the start-up that is comprehensible and plausible. The study’s second objective is to assess the influence of “effectiveness” increasing factors in self-presentations directed to an audience of diverse stakeholders on the “success” of the start-up. Though the statistical analysis yields mainly inconclusive results, the thesis derives suggestions for future research from the qualitative exploration of the sample texts. Future studies should focus on “pitches” of similar length with a minimum wordcount of 200 when applying linguistic analysis. Further, they should focus on short-term outcomes from the presentation, rather than the start-up’s long-term “success”. Thirdly, practical recommendations regarding the facilitation of “effective pitching” are derived for the organization Mind & Market. This organization connects entrepreneurs with other stakeholders by organizing events in Belgium and Luxembourg. It is suggested that Mind & Market should organize workshops to prepare entrepreneurs for their “pitch performance” before the largest events and to provide easy-to-access educational materials on their website. This thesis informs researchers that examine the entrepreneurial “pitch”. It is also relevant for new venture founders that need to present their business vision to stakeholders in order to gain their support.