It is important to settle the basics about what you actually do in the first instance of a pitch. It will pop some of the suspense, but in return you get the upside of an audience which pays attention instead of one that is trying to figure out what you do.

In fiction, readers are longing for that moment where the entire plot comes together. In business, not really.

Recently, I coached a company in the field of quantum computing, and I suggested to put 3 very short bits of info at the very start of the presentation, and claimed that this would actually not kill the “suspense” in the talk.

• A super quick “reminder” of quantum versus traditional physics

• A super quick highlight what quantum vs. binary computing is

• A super quick description what a “quantum computer” actually is, physically.

The challenge is not to elaborate about the points above on that first summary point:

• In Newton’s traditional physics, objects have a specific location and behave according to the laws of gravity (i.e., electrons “flying” around an atom nucleus), in quantum physics, these boundaries no longer exists and you are no longer able to say where objects are precisely.

• Quantum computing uses this ambiguity of an infinite number of states an object can be in, instead of a discrete 0 and 1, we now an infinite umber of states that opens up the potential for massive parallel computing

• Today’s quantum computing setups are lab installations in which scientist try to control / measure these states, and try to use the speed of their variations to solve problems where you need try out a particularly large number states (i.e., trial-and-error AI algorithms). It is still early days.

Not scientifically correct, probably not correctly worded, but people will get the idea.

Cover image by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash