Describing Your Product in One Sentence

Scene: You are at a startup meetup in Singapore. You are holding a warm drink and a name card. A man turns to you and asks the oldest question at any event. He says four words: so, what do you do? You have one sentence. Most people waste it on their job title.

Man: So, what do you do? You: I build an app for small coffee shops. It counts the milk they use each week. Then it orders more before they run out. Man: Ah. So you stop coffee shops from running out of milk. You: Exactly. That is the whole product.

Notice what you did not say. You did not say platform. You did not say solution. You named one kind of customer and one problem. Small coffee shops. Running out of milk. Then the man repeated it back in his own words. That is the only test that matters.

Here is a shape you can copy. I help [who] do [what], so they stop [problem]. Fill in the three blanks tonight. Then say it out loud twice. If a word feels too big to speak, it is too big to write. Cut it. Your sentence should take five seconds.

Try it this week. Write your sentence in one line. Read it to a friend outside your industry. Ask that friend to repeat it back. If they cannot, remove one word and try again. A good pitch is not written at a desk. It is tested on real people.