跟读练习: How Pitching Investors is Different Than Pitching Customers - Michael Seibel - 通过视频学习英语口语

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Hello, I'm Michael Seibel.

I'm partner at Y Combinator.

Today I'd like to talk about the difference between your investor pitch and your customer pitch.

What most founders typically screw up here is

that your customer typically knows a lot about the problem

that you're trying to solve and is extremely personally interested in the solution that you have.

Whereas the investor might not have the problem

that you're trying to solve at all

and might be only interested in the solution in so much as they think it can build a big company.

What this means is that the same pitch often doesn't work for these two communities.

So when you're talking to a customer, one of the ways that you build credibility is that you use jargon.

You use the language of the industry.

Another thing that you do is you try to get them to speak a lot about the problem that they have.

You want them to be talking more than you.

And then the third thing is

that you try to figure out how the solution can help them personally as soon as possible.

When you think about where to use this customer pitch, it can be on a sales call, it can be on the front page of your website, it can be on your to -do, your help, your FAQ, it can be in user interviews.

A lot of the language is really relevant there.

On the other hand, when you're talking to an investor, unless you're pitching a consumer product that you're pretty sure that they'd want to use,

you have to assume that they don't really understand the problem.

In this situation, jargon is actually going to hurt you.

It's not going to help you.

So you want to make sure your pitch is jargon -free.

In addition, what you want to do is make sure that you're using language that they can understand.

Oftentimes, people will incorporate flowery language.

Oh, we're building a platform, or this is like the first thing ever done.

It's the most unique thing ever.

What I call marketing language.

Marketing language, unfortunately, is fluff that an investor has to filter out to understand what you really are trying to do.

The best example I give about this is pitching Google.

Imagine if I was pitching Google and I said, oh, Google organizes the world's information.

For an investor, that's actually not telling them anything.

If they understood what Google did already, then sure, that'd be great.

But if they don't really understand what Google does, that doesn't tell them anything.

It doesn't create any picture in their head.

A much better pitch for Google is to say, Google's a new type of search engine.

With Google, you actually go to our website, you type what you want to know into a search box, you click enter,

and we report in an ordered list websites that we think can help you with the information you're looking for.

What makes Google different is that those websites are ranked by how other websites link to them.

And so those results are way more relevant.

That is something that people can understand, even if they don't use a search engine.

That is something that people can understand when they don't know any of the jargon of your industry.

You have to be really, really careful when you're thinking about an investor pitch.

Your investor pitch is probably not something you want to put on your website.

It's probably not something that feels comfortable when you're talking to a customer.

It's something that really is only typically reserved for your pitch deck.

If your front page of your website and your pitch deck are saying the same thing, and you don't have a product where you assume the customer is also a user,

a product like Yelp or Uber, you might be doing it wrong.

So in an investor pitch, typically what the investor is curious about is, one, what do you do in the simplest language possible?

Two, how far along are you?

Just the idea phase, are you building the product?

Have you launched the product?

Do you have customers?

Do you have growth?

Three, how big of a total addressable market you think you're addressing?

Four, how do you plan to charge your users?

Five, what do you think you know about this market? that other people or competitors don't understand?

And six, who's on your team?

Specifically, who are the founders?

More specifically, do you have the ability to build the product that you are trying to bring to market?

So those things are what the investor is really interested in, as opposed to the customer,

where the customer often doesn't really care about at least half of those things.

The customer certainly cares how much you're charging, and they certainly care about what you're doing.

But they're actually probably far more interested in what the functionality of what you're doing is, what the onboarding process is like, specifically how the pricing applies to them.

Specifically, does it solve their specific problems versus maybe some more general problem?

And so in a customer conversation, you end up getting into a lot of interesting nitty -grittiness about the product.

It might be you want to bring up screenshots.

You actually might want to do a live demo.

In an investor conversation, more often than not, you're really getting to the integrity about the business, about how big the market is, whether customers actually want to buy this product, what their demand level is,

how many customers there are potentially for this product.

All of those types of things are on the business

and less getting into screenshots and demos and so on and so forth.

Of course, there are exceptions on all sides.

I would certainly say that mass market consumer products.

The investor pitch looks a little bit more like the customer pitch.

But for most companies that are going through YC, we have to split these up.

We have to kind of teach founders that just going one -to -one investor pitch, customer pitch, is not the way to do it.

Interestingly enough, it takes them some practice.

Within the first month, YC founders are still trying to figure out how to meld their customer pitch and their investor pitch.

Only after kind of constant trying do we convince them it's better just to have two separate pitches.

In summary, the customer pitch and the investor pitch are two very different things.

The investor is trying to understand, can you build a big business?

The customer is trying to understand, does your product solve their specific problem?

Because there are two different motivations for these two different audiences, most likely you're going to need two different pitches.

That's one thing that you should focus on, even at the early stage of your company.

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本课的词汇与口语要点

这段视频共有 85 个句子、1158 个单词可供跟读。讲话部分时长为 6:00。说话人语速较快，每分钟约 193 个词，会出现较多连读和弱读。 88% 的单词属于英语最常用的 3,000 词，词汇容易理解。

视频中的重点词汇

视频中 15 个值得学习的单词，附发音和释义：

单词	发音	释义
investor 名词	/ɪnˈvɛs.tə(ɹ)/	投資者 /投资者, 投資家 /投资家
founder 名词	/ˈfaʊ̯n.dəː/	創辦人 /创办人, 創立者 /创立者
solve 动词	/sɒlv/	解決 /解决
deck 名词	/ˈdɛk/	甲板
demo 名词	/ˈdɛm.oʊ/	示範 /示范
screenshot 名词	/ˈskriːn.ʃɑt/	截圖 /截图
curious 形容词	/ˈkjʊɹ.i.əs/	好奇, 有好奇心
flower 名词	/ˈfloʊɚ/	хуа, хуар
whereas	/(h)wɛɹˈæz/	然而
summary 名词	/ˈsʌm.ə.ɹi/	摘要
exception 名词	/əkˈsɛpʃən/	排除
versus	/ˈvɝsəs/	對 /对
filter 名词	/ˈfɪltɚ/	過濾器 /过滤器, 濾過器 /滤过器
convince 动词	/kənˈvɪns/	說服 /说服
integrity 名词	/ɪnˈtɛɡɹəti/	正直

视频中出现的短语动词

单词	释义
figure out 动词	弄清楚
bring up 动词	撫養 /抚养, 養大 /养大
end up 动词	到达
go through 动词	通過 /通过

需要注意的发音

说话人用了 33 次缩略和弱读形式，例如 you're, don't, doesn't。请按听到的简短形式来说。

“sh” 和 “zh” 音: screenshot /ˈskriːn.ʃɑt/, potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, exception /əkˈsɛpʃən/, motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/
长单词——注意重音位置: potentially /pəˈtɛnʃ(ə)li/, integrity /ɪnˈtɛɡɹəti/, motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/, credibility /kɹɛd.əˈbɪ.ɫɪ.ti/, incorporate /ɪŋˈkɔɹ.pɚ.eɪt/

如何用这段视频练习

先完整听一遍视频，不要开口，记下不认识的单词。
先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟读，熟练之后再回到正常速度。
录下自己的声音并与原声对比，特别注意 investor, founder, solve 这类单词。

什么是跟读法？

跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。

影子跟读法: 阅读完整分步指南 →

跟读练习: How Pitching Investors is Different Than Pitching Customers - Michael Seibel - 通过视频学习英语口语

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