# Pitch rhetoric: what was measured, what is illustration A checklist for the spoken script of a 2–3 minute pitch video, and for any slide line that has to land on first read. Keep the two layers apart: only the first section was tested against controls ([what-separates-winners.md](what-separates-winners.md)). ## Measured Language metrics computed by script on the 43 winners' and 47 controls' pitch transcripts, Mann-Whitney, 14 metrics, no correction. None separated: - **Density of concrete numbers:** counted one per number ("$70,000" and "330 million" are one each), a median 1.9 numbers a minute for winners vs 1.8 for controls (p 0.04997 uncorrected, the smallest of 14 language tests; about 0.70 after Holm); share of sentences carrying a number, 0.17 vs 0.12 (p 0.13). - **Surface plainness:** sentence length (17 vs 14 words, p 0.41), Flesch reading ease (59 vs 65, p 0.41), share of short sentences, use of "you", analogies (a median of 0 in both groups). - Total words 490 vs 413 (p 0.08); words per minute (170 vs 153) was not tested. Reading: what separated winners was content, traction and the team's credential, not style. No language metric did, number density included, so everything below is craft, not evidence. ## Illustrative: what winners did Picked while reading the winners' transcripts. Not counted, and not compared with controls, so none of these is evidence on its own. 1. **One-liner: a category noun the listener knows, plus who it's for.** "stablecoin payments for supply chain" ([CargoBill](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/cargobill)); "the human infrastructure layer for physical AI" ([CrowdBrain](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/crowdbrain)). 2. **"An alternative to X" when an incumbent exists.** "an open source alternative to Stripe … using an identical API to Stripe" ([Zoneless](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/zoneless)). The incumbent does half the explaining. 3. **Without-you vs with-you, both as numbers.** "Without TapeDrive, 10 megabytes today would set you back around 72 Sol." Then: "1400 times less." ([TapeDrive](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/tapedrive)); "a 3% merchant fee, which is on average 2 to 3x less than Klarna" ([Yumi Finance](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/yumi-finance)). 4. **The problem from the founder's own chair, with a number.** "I was paying $9,400 per month using Stripe Connect to do payouts" ([Zoneless](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/zoneless)). 5. **Every number with its unit, its time window and whose it is.** "grown 100% month-over-month for 4 consecutive months" ([DashX](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/dashx-1)); "We launched 1.5 months ago and we're doing 8k in MRR." ([stablecorp](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/stablecorp)). 6. **The mechanism in one causal sentence.** "rather than having … one miner win every 10 minutes, … everyone can win as long as they can land a valid hash on chain" ([Ore](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/ore)). Shape: today it works by A; A breaks because of B; we do C; so D. 7. **Why now, or "it can't happen until…".** "prediction markets can't become a real asset class until users are actually able to build portfolios, hedge risks properly" ([Senthos](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/senthos)). A counterintuitive customer fact works too: "merchants prefer QR codes" ([LocalPay](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/localpay)). 8. **Proof narrated in the present tense, as it happens.** "we can just check the transaction which was successful" ([Reflect](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/reflect-protocol)). Present tense only for what has happened; see the tense rule in [pitch-deck](../../pitch-deck/SKILL.md#3-narrative-spine). 9. **Name the obvious objection, then the defence.** "Flip side of fractional reserves is a possible bank run scenario." Then the defence, a first-in-first-out withdrawal queue ([Kormos](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/kormos)). 10. **One concrete use case.** "a staking provider can target specific users who are not staking with a unique offer" ([Torque](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/torque)). 11. **A credential is one specific fact, with a number, tied to the problem.** "Our team from Baidu Global has years of experience with top keyboard apps like FaceMoji and Symoji which reached 330 million daily active users", for a keyboard product ([TypeX](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/typex-keyboard)). Citing a credential is measured (the credential row in [what-separates-winners.md](what-separates-winners.md#what-separated-robustly)); this shape of it is illustration. 12. **Spoken signposts, and the one-liner again at the close.** "So what is TapeDrive?" ([TapeDrive](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/tapedrive)); "This has once again been the pitch for Zoneless, which is a Stripe Connect alternative." ([Zoneless](https://colosseum.com/arena/projects/zoneless)). ## Illustrative: how pitches lose Patterns seen in control pitches while reading, each in at least one of them; not counted. The bracketed shapes are templates, not quotes. - A claim with no who, no number and no consequence ("[Category] needs a [better thing]"). - Stacked buzzwords ("a [tech]-powered [category] layer for [abstract noun]"). - A projection with nothing under it ("we'll take [X]% of the market by [year]"). - Self-assessment in place of evidence ("an [adjective] and [adjective] experience"). - A generic "why Solana" ("it's fast and cheap"). - A feature list or UI tour with no problem and no user. ## Checklist for the script - [ ] **Measured:** traction. Say it with a number: its unit, its window and its owner. Most projects that cite traction give a number, winners and controls alike, so the number is how to say it, not a separate signal. Without traction, the checkable artifact or the record ([the other way in](what-separates-winners.md#no-traction-yet-the-other-way-in)). - [ ] **Measured:** a team credential. Make it one fact per founder, tied to the problem; "I study X" is a credential with no fact. - [ ] One-liner in the first sentences, repeated at the close. "Alternative to X" if an incumbent exists. - [ ] Without-you vs with-you, both as numbers. - [ ] The problem from your own chair, with a number. - [ ] The mechanism in one causal sentence. - [ ] Why now, in one sentence. - [ ] The obvious objection named, with the defence. - [ ] Present tense only for what is measured; the roadmap in the future tense. - [ ] None of the losing patterns above.