How to pitch your business in 45 seconds

Most people do not freeze at the record button because they do not know their business. They freeze because nobody ever told them what a pitch is supposed to contain.

So here is the shape. Four parts, said in plain words, in about forty-five seconds. You can fill it in on the back of a receipt, read it out loud twice, and have something worth recording before dinner.

This is the same structure we teach in the Icreatechs course, and it is the one we see working best in the app, where every pitch is a 15 to 60 second voice recording and the crowd decides what rises.

Why 45 seconds

Forty-five seconds is long enough to say something real and short enough that a stranger will listen to the end. Go much under thirty and you usually skip the part that makes you believable: who actually buys. Go past a minute and people start skipping, no matter how good the idea is.

It also forces a useful discipline. If you cannot explain the business in forty-five seconds, the problem is rarely the time limit. It is usually that you have not yet decided what the business is.

The four parts

1. The problem (about 10 seconds)

Start with the situation your customer is in, not with your product. Make it concrete enough that the listener can picture a specific person on a specific day.

Weak: "Many small businesses struggle with logistics."

Better: "Tricycle drivers at our terminal in Bacoor have twenty minutes for lunch and nowhere nearby that is ready when they are."

Name a place if you can. Place is the first thing that makes you sound like a person and not an advertisement.

2. Your solution (about 10 seconds)

Say what you actually sell, the way you would explain it to your tita. No "platform", no "solutions", no "leveraging".

"I cook lunch the night before and have forty packed meals ready at 11:30, sixty pesos each."

If you have a number, use it. Numbers are what separate a business from a plan.

3. Who buys it, and how it is going (about 15 seconds)

This is the part most pitches skip, and it is the part listeners trust most. Who has paid you? How many? How often do they come back?

"About thirty drivers buy most days, and students from the school next door on Fridays. Eight months now."

If nobody has paid yet, say so. "I have not sold one yet. I am looking for my first ten customers" is a stronger line than dressing up an idea as a going concern. People can tell the difference, and they are kind to honest beginners. They are not kind to being sold to.

4. The ask (about 10 seconds)

End with one specific, small thing a listener could actually do. Not "support". Not "investors". Something a stranger could help with this week.

• "I need a supplier in Cavite who can deliver rice before 5am."
• "I am looking for two testers with Android phones."
• "I want to talk to anyone who has registered a food business in Imus."

A specific ask is the difference between a pitch people like and a pitch people act on.

A fill-in-the-blanks script

Copy this, fill it in, and read it out loud with a timer running:

I am [name] from [place]. [Customer] has a problem: [the problem, on a normal day]. So I [what you sell, in plain words, with a price]. Right now [who buys, how many, how long]. What I need next is [one specific ask].

That is five sentences. Read at a normal pace, it lands somewhere between forty and fifty seconds.

What to leave out

• Market size. "The Philippine food market is worth billions" tells the listener nothing about you.
• Five-year plans. Nobody listening to a voice pitch from a stranger has been moved by a projection.
• Anything that is not true yet. "We are expanding to three branches" when nothing is signed is the fastest way to lose the room.
• A list of features. Pick the one thing that matters to your customer and stop.

Recording it well

You do not need a studio. You need a room with less noise, not silence.

1. Do not read it word for word. Put the four parts on a scrap of paper as bullet points, then talk. A written script read aloud sounds read aloud.
2. Hold the phone a hand's length from your mouth. Closer gets breathy, further picks up the room.
3. Take the second attempt, not the tenth. The first take is nerves. By the tenth you are performing. The second or third is usually you.
4. Speak in the language you sell in. Taglish, Bisaya, English, whatever your customers hear from you at the counter. Nobody here is grading grammar.
5. Add a photo that shows the real thing. Your stall, your packaging, your app's actual screen. Not a stock image.

A stumble sounds like a person. A perfect take sounds like an ad, and people skip ads.

After you post

On Icreatechs everyone gets ten votes a day, so a vote means somebody chose your pitch over others they also heard. That makes the count more honest than a like, but it is still not the goal. The goal is the comment from someone who can help with your ask.

Read every comment. Reply to the useful ones. And if the feedback keeps pointing at the same confusion, record again. The founders who get somewhere are rarely the ones with the best first pitch. They are the ones people have watched improve over a few months, because each time they posted, something real had moved.

Your next step

Open Icreatechs on your iPhone, tap record, and say the five sentences. If you want the longer version of this, lesson 5 of the in-app course ("Forty-Five Seconds, Six Sentences") walks through it with timings for each part.

Then bring it to the community. Post your recording link in the Discord feedback room and ask for one specific note. You will be surprised how much one honest listener improves the second take.