Two and a half minutes. That’s how much time the influential tech incubator Y Combinator gives startup founders to deliver a perfectly crafted pitch to an auditorium packed with investors and journalists.
Two and a half minutes. That’s how much time the influential tech incubator Y Combinator gives startup founders to deliver a perfectly crafted pitch to an auditorium packed with investors and journalists.
With a record 114 startups in its current class, Y Combinator split its startup demos into two days at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. After sitting through 59 pitches yesterday—with almost as many to go today—we noticed there’s a formula many startups rely on to succinctly and effectively get their points across.
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Y Combinator president Sam Altman says there’s no set structure to startup pitches, but founders work with different partners to help hone their speeches. “I understand some of them sound similar,” he tells Quartz. “We custom tailor [the presentations] to every company. The key is to figure out the most important points and articulate it well.”
That said, there’s something uncanny about the trajectories of the pitches, which typically go as follows:
