Can you describe your business in 5 words?
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Don’t worry… most entrepreneurs can’t do it. Honestly, it’s hard.When you start to describe your business, it’s tempting to start by explaining the problem, often in more detail than people want to hear about. Then you pivot to explaining what your business does and the solution it provides. The description evolves into a minute or more of explaining the details and the person you’re explaining it to has either lost interest or is just plain lost.Or, you go the other way and just say something like, “I’m starting a business in finance.” Instead of too much detail, you share almost no detail and people still don’t know what you’re doing.
That's a problem.The struggle to succinctly describe what your business does reveals something important. If you can't distill what your business does into a handful of words, you may not have enough clarity about what you're actually offering, who you're offering it to, and why it matters.
Why Five Words Forces Clarity
I've written before about building a one-sentence elevator pitch, and that exercise is incredibly valuable. But five words is even more demanding. There's no room to hide behind jargon or vague language. You have to make choices.
Those choices are the point.
A five-word pitch forces you to answer three questions simultaneously: What do you sell? Who is it for? And why should they care? You won't be able to include all three explicitly in five words, but the constraint forces you to prioritize. And that prioritization is a strategic exercise, not just a wordsmithing one.
What Good Looks Like
Here are some five-word pitches for well-known companies. These aren't their official taglines, but they capture the essence of what each business does:
- Slack: Organized team messaging, less email.
- Airbnb: Book unique homes from locals.
- Stripe: Simple online payments for developers.
- Dollar Shave Club: Affordable razors delivered to you.
- Warby Parker: Designer eyewear at fair prices.
- Mailchimp: Email marketing for small businesses.
- Peloton: Premium fitness classes at home.
- Shopify: Build your online store easily.
Notice what each of these pitches has in common. They include some version of who the customer is, what the product does, and what makes it different or better. Not every pitch hits all three perfectly, and that's fine. The exercise is about getting as close as you can.
How to Build Yours
Start by writing down everything your business does. Don't edit yourself. Get it all out. It will probably be a paragraph or two, maybe more.
Now cut it in half. Then cut it in half again. Keep going until you're down to a single sentence. You might recognize this as essentially building a one-sentence pitch, which follows a simple formula: We're [building/selling our solution] for [target market] that makes it [faster, easier, cheaper] to [solve the customer's problem].
For LivePlan, my one-sentence pitch is: We're building simple business planning software for entrepreneurs that makes it faster and easier to budget, forecast, and track business performance.
Now take that sentence and ruthlessly compress it to five words. What's the core? What can you cut without losing the essence?
For LivePlan, I'd land on: Simple planning for growing businesses.
That's the exercise. And it's harder than it sounds because every word has to earn its place.
Why This Matters Beyond the Pitch
The five-word pitch isn't just something you say at a networking event or a dinner party when someone asks what you do. It's a strategic tool.
When you've distilled your business down to five words, you've also clarified your focus. You know who you're serving. You know what problem you're solving. And you know what makes your approach different.
That clarity ripples through every decision you make. It shapes your marketing messaging, your product roadmap, and which opportunities you say yes and no to. If a new feature or initiative doesn't fit within those five words, it might not be the right priority.
Tim Berry, our company founder, says strategy is focus. Your five-word pitch is a test of whether you actually have that focus or whether you're still trying to be everything to everyone.
Common Mistakes
A few things to watch for as you work on yours.
Being too generic is the most common problem. "We help businesses grow faster" could describe almost any company. If your five-word pitch could apply to a dozen other businesses, it's not specific enough. Push yourself to include something that distinguishes what you do from everyone else.
The other common mistake is describing features instead of outcomes. Your customers don't care about what your product does nearly as much as they care about what it does for them. Lead with the outcome.
Start Here
Take 15 minutes this week and try the exercise. Write down everything your business does. Compress it to one sentence. Then compress it to five words.
Share it with a friend or colleague who doesn't know much about your business and ask them if they understand what you do. If they get it, you've nailed it. If they look confused, keep refining.
The constraint is the point. Five words forces you to make strategic choices about what your business actually is and who it's for. Those choices will serve you well beyond the pitch itself.
Noah Parsons
Before joining Palo Alto Software, Noah Parsons was an early Internet marketing and product expert in the Silicon Valley. He joined Yahoo! in 1996 as one of its first 101 employees and become Producer of the Yahoo! Employment property as part of the Yahoo! Classifieds team before leaving to serve as Director of Production at Epinions.com. He is a graduate of Princeton University.Noah devotes most of his free time to his three young sons. In the winter you'll find him giving them lessons on the ski slopes, and in summer they're usually involved in a variety of outdoor pursuits.Noah is currently the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan.
