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David Rogier is the founder and CEO of MasterClass, the streaming platform he launched in 2015 to give anyone, anywhere, the opportunity to learn from the world's top experts.
Since Rogier's plan was little more than a dream at the time, he had to master the art of the pitch to make MasterClass a reality.
I recently sat down with Rogier at MasterClass headquarters in San Francisco to learn more about the communication tactics he used to turn a bold idea into an online learning company that now offers more than 185 instructors in eleven categories.
Rogier's difficult pitch was aimed at three groups of stakeholders with different experiences and goals. The key to success? Tailor the message.
Long before MasterClass subscribers could learn to play basketball from Stephen Curry or singing from Mariah Carey, Rogier needed money to get the idea off the ground.
Rogier believed in his idea. Now, he had to convince venture capital investors to believe in it, too.
With no working platform and no committed instructors, Rogier had to tailor the pitch. First, he started with evidence. He offered proof points, such as data from online surveys, to support his argument that such a product would find an audience.
Rogier also chose to avoid PowerPoint slides. Instead, he described his idea for MasterClass while sketching the strategy on a whiteboard.
By working through the "hypothesis" in real-time, whiteboarding made the pitch "feel more like a science experiment than a formal presentation," Rogier says. "It helped me because whiteboarding stood out from what investors were used to seeing."
Whiteboarding also got the investors involved in developing the strategy, even before they committed their cash. They offered feedback and took their turns on the whiteboard. "Instead of just watching slide after slide, investors felt like they were involved in the thought process," Rogier recalls. "It turned from a pitch to a brainstorm,"
Once he had the commitment from investors, Rogier had another group to convince: famous people who were tough to reach and hard to convince.
Before MasterClass could offer instructional videos from the best, Rogier had to do his best to convince experts to create classes.
It took a year of persistent calls to convince a who's who of instructors to be the first to launch the platform: Usher, Annie Leibovitz, Dustin Hoffman, James Patterson, and Serena Williams.
Once again, Rogier had to tailor the message and the presentation tools to persuade this unique audience.
During the pitch process, ask yourself, "What does my audience care about?
For Rogier's pitches, he knew investors cared about the market opportunity to make a profit for their funds and shareholders. But hooking instructors required more than a pure business argument. "These people all have other ways to earn tons of money," Rogier says.
So Rogier reminded the instructors that they had influential teachers or mentors who had changed their lives. MasterClass, he said, would be an opportunity for these experts to pay it forward and to share their wisdom and talent on a global scale.
As he did with investors, Rogier avoided PowerPoint. But he didn't use a whiteboard, either.
"I wanted them to get a picture of what a class might look like," Rogier said. "So I found inspirational clips from other interviews with a vibe similar to what we were trying to achieve. I wanted to make it different than the investor pitch with data and numbers. The materials were quite different."
The materials and the message also had to change for the third critical group of people Rogier had to persuade--the team.
Some of Rogier's peers thought his idea had little chance of success. However, Rogier soon learned that those who knew and admired him would be among the first to join him on the journey.
They were inspired by Rogier's passion for education and his mission "to create a school that made it possible for anybody in the world to learn from the best minds and masters of their crafts."
Communication skills are critical in attracting top talent. And make no mistake--investors are paying attention. Rogier says, "Investors look at your ability to inspire others as a test to see how well you can sell your vision."
So when it comes to pitching an idea, consider PowerPoint as one tool in your rhetorical toolkit. But it's not the only one. Use different tools and tailor your message for each group.
A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta
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