What are 3 essential components of a great elevator pitch?

Value proposition.
Revenue model.
Brevity.

The word YOU counts for 100 more points than the word WE.

"We're developing a process to save money on domestic air travel." 5 points.

BUT

"We're developing a process to save you money on domestic air travel." 105 points, and ears perk up.

(YOU = you, your, yours) (WE = me, I, mine, our, we're, you get the picture)

Here's a good tool for analyzing your page or phrase's focus: http://www.futurenowinc.com/wewe.htm

Every sentence you say should have a fact about your business. Do NOT use marketing talk.

"We're going to change the world through a new innovative approach."

That sentence says absolutely nothing about your idea. Time is a factor, so keep it straightforward and to the point. You don't have words to waste in an elevator pitch.

And always remember, many investors and vc's specifically say they often fund because of the founder(s) and not the idea.

Before you get to the elevator pitch, you really need to understand your business. Doing that requires figuring out the three most important documents for any startup: Executive Summary, Pitch and Financial Model. Check out this post for my take on how they should be done.

Once you have that, the the elevator pitch will flow easily. The basic job of the elevator pitch is to get you the next meeting. It has to hit hard and quick and leave them curious and wanting more.

You want to make it personal. This relates to the good comment above about the use of "you". If you only have a few moments of someone's time, the only goal is to get them to think "hmm, interesting". If you can do that, you can get a second conversation, which is the real goal. You might do that by hooking them with the market opportunity, with a good positioning statement, with a problem you know they relate to, or a great fact. Lots of ways of starting.

Something that hasn't been mentioned--but which is crucial--is practice. Give your elevator pitch to EVERY person who will listen. Even your dog. 1. Pitch 2. Read (the audience's response) 3. Refine. No matter where the quality of your pitch starts, if you rapidly iterate you'll end up with a good "hook" after 50+ pitches (and a great one after 100+).

The person who mentioned avoid marketing talk is spot on, I hear so many people do their 30 second pitch and still have zero idea what their product does.

• What the huge problem you are solving?
• What is your solution?
• Why is it so valuable?

The other reason to practice over and over is so that it doesn't sound rehearsed, it should just be second nature to you.

I would say that if you are 'pitching' verbally to a group of people who have been hearing other peoples pitches then the three most important things would be

1. Grab Attention by simplified value proposition
2. Scale the solution in their minds by pointing out existing demand or new market creation in as few words a possible.
3. Refine and repeat keywords.

However if you had to pitch by email that would be a whole differnt story. Read more on email pitching here

Having been on stage at a conference like DEMO and having pitched to countless VCs, the secret is very simple: show traction and no one else will care about your presentation tricks.

If customers are signing up in droves to use your product, you have traction.

If angels are signing up in droves to join your angel round, you have traction.

Anything else is just tricks and the people you are pitching to are smart enough to know it.

The first thing you want to be clear on when you craft an elevator pitch is what your desired outcome is. Since it's not likely that you will be pulling out a contract for a signature, generally you'll be looking for a match with your needs and then seeking further contact. Your elevator pitch should be provocative enough to attract interest but not too wordy and not just a slew of keywords. Here's a link to a 4-minute video summary of a class I taught on the subject at my local chamber of commerce: http://blog.ashevillechamber.org/2009/05/your-business-in-30-seconds-elevator.html

I break down a quick pitch into these three components.

1. The types of clients you work with that are experiencing the same problem.
2. Why your solution is unique at addressing the clients problem.
3. The end result of what a client gets from your solution (how they benefited from the problem being solved).

An articulated guide to pitches is the excellent book [Made to Stick][1], which not only gives you examples, but also reasons for, and statistical and experimental studies. Taking the user’s perspective is non trivial, say Dan & Chip Heath, because you are under the “Curse of Knowledge”: it is very hard for you and your team to look at your product from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about it, if you don’t dedicate some time to this.

First, explain WHAT your solution in using clear, plain-English terms. Just as importantly, leave out most to all of the details about HOW your solution works, because that will only tend to confuse the audience.

Second, explain the problem your solution solves and why people will drop their current solution and change and adopt your solution.

Third, explain who you are to see the problem and to build the solution; your credentials and credibility. The person who talked about credibility is correct, but you want to talk about it last rather than first so that your credibility and credentials are the things that linger on in the minds of the audience.

I write about this more in my essay Elevator Pitch 101.