One-line pitch

Write the sentence that makes the right person say "yes, I want that" before you've finished speaking.

Founders usually describe what they built. Customers buy what changes for them. The gap between those two is where most first launches go quiet. This skill closes it by writing the pitch from the customer's side, naming what it replaces, and testing it the way the market will.

What you need

1. Who it's for. If the founder doesn't know, run the Who buys from me skill first. A pitch written for everyone is a pitch for no one.
2. What the product does, in the founder's own words. Messy is fine.
3. What the customer does today instead: the tool, the workaround, the person they hire, or nothing.

Steps

1. Name the one thing. One outcome the customer gets, in one short sentence. Strong positioning sounds almost too simple: spend less money, design without being a designer. If you need "and", you have two things. Pick one.

2. Name what it replaces. Every product beats an old way of doing something. Write down the two or three old ways your customer uses now, by name and as they'd describe them, including "do nothing". The pitch gets sharper when it's clearly an answer to something.

3. Draft three versions of the line, each from a different angle:

   • the outcome ("Find the people already looking for what you sell")
   • the old way it replaces ("Stop paying for ads that test your targeting, not your idea")
   • the person ("For founders who built it and nobody came")

4. Run the layperson test. Would someone outside tech understand every word? Swap any category jargon for the words customers use. "Get users" beats "user growth". "Find customers" beats "demand generation".

5. Run the one-line test. Picture the specific customer hearing it. Do they say yes with no follow-up question? If they'd ask "meaning what?", rewrite. How fast the right person gets it is the clearest signal you'll have.

6. Answer the eight questions a convinced stranger needs before buying without a call. These become the skeleton of a homepage or product overview:

   1. What is this?
   2. Who is it for?
   3. What is it fixing or replacing?
   4. How does it work?
   5. What do I get?
   6. Can you prove it?
   7. Why pick you?
   8. What's the next step?

Output

The one thing: <one short sentence>
For: <the person, narrowly>
Replaces: <old way 1> · <old way 2> · <doing nothing>

Pitch options:
1. <outcome version>
2. <old-way version>
3. <person version>
Recommended: <number>, because <reason tied to the customer's words>

The eight answers:
1. What is it: ...
(through 8)

Rules

• Never call the product by its software category. "CRM", "platform" and "AI tool" start a features race.
• No adjectives doing the work of evidence. "Powerful", "seamless" and "best-in-class" mean nothing to a stranger.
• No proof you don't have. If question 6 has no honest answer yet, write "not yet" and say what would count.
• One claim per sentence. Short sentences.
• If the founder's description and the customer's description disagree, the customer wins.

Why this matters more at zero customers

At ten million in revenue, buyers get cover from everyone else who already uses the product. At zero, there's no crowd to follow. The pitch has to make it plainly obvious to one person that this is for them. That is why positioning is worth an afternoon now, and why logo and tagline polish usually isn't.

With MyPip (coming)

When the MyPip MCP is live, this skill will be able to test your pitch against the words real people used when they said yes or no to an introduction, so the line you choose is the one your market already answers to.