After a few years of working in the television industry, particularly on the planet they call Hollywood, I was immersed in the “high concept pitch” language of the entertainment industry. The practice is meant to impart your idea to studio executives with nano-attention spans by equating the idea with another more familiar, popular and successful movie or TV show:
One of my favorite movies, Robert Altman’s The Player, nails this culture perfectly (though many think the movie is a parody – the depictions are really spot-on). In one scene, a pair of writers start their pitch with “it’s Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman.”
Silicon Valley has also adopted the practice:
- “It’s MySpace for College Students“
- “It’s Facebook for Professionals“
- “It’s Google for Humming Songs“
In fact, the practice has nearly replaced the standard elevator pitch for startups.
While I will cover the more serious and practical aspects of this technique in a future post, I wanted to showcase a site that takes this concept to an absurd extreme:
Go to the site “Wait what does your startup do” (with the equally appropriate URL): itsthisforthat.com – and start clicking as it produces a random “high concept pitch” for the typical high tech startup.