The food: Bun Oc (or Snail Soup)

Where to find it: Bun Oc (or Snail Soup) Restaurant on Cau Go St, Hanoi, Vietnam

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Welcome to another edition of #FoodEntrepreneur Friday, where I serve up an order of international food with a side of insight for entrepreneurs.

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There she stood beaming. Within her outstretched hands she offered a warm bowl of Hanoi, home-comfort: Bun Oc (or Snail Soup). In Hanoi people eat soup full of sea snails like we eat Cheerios for breakfast in America. I’m not kidding. A steaming bowl of soup awakes every Vietnamese. Cold milk and crunchies is a big difference from steaming snails.

Pitching a business idea is a lot like offering snail soup to a Rice Crispies-raised Americano. It’s like presenting a different reality. People will challenge your business idea: what if this doesn’t work? what if that doesn’t work?

This is the final day in a seven-week journey as Longa Travels Productions attends the Draper University entrepreneurial program. This week I pitched my global food documentary series to a full panel of investors and venture capitalists. Here are a couple approaches you can take when pitching a business idea.

The First Approach: Wow, How, Now

WOW them.

Tell your audience HOW your business will wow them. Explain to the potential investors how your business works and what might be that secret sauce that’ll blow the competition away.

Give your audience a sense of urgency. Tell them why your business needs to happen NOW.

The Second Approach: Situation, Impact, Resolution

Tell your audience the situation. For example here’s a crazy scary hypothetical: the world will face inevitable nuclear winter.

Tell your audience the impact of this situation. For example, the world, as we know it, will end.

Tell your audience your resolution. For example, buy my company’s bomb shelters and you will save your life.

So if you try these two approaches to pitching a business idea then you might very well succeed in pitching your business idea. You might successfully serve snail soup to a bunch of Wheaties westerners.

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 ¹ Special note: During the Q&A session of my business idea pitch I served chocolates and Thai fried worms to the panel of investors. The famous venture capitalist Bill Draper popped a worm in his mouth and then immediately spit it out after hearing what the food actually was. That’ll go down in the life history book, for sure.