跟他学学用英文来做创业公司的pitch演讲

关注这个公众号的朋友还记得孟庆伟Justin这个名字吗？他是公众号“赏析那份英国报纸” (justintheeconomist) 的创始人。由于他忙着创业，公众号偶尔会更新。对英文写作有兴趣的朋友们可以关注他，读读干货学学真本事。

今天和大家分享的是Justin做的一次presentation，更具体来说是一个pitching competition，他在Slush上海站代表自己的公司“助理来也”拿到了第二名的好成绩。

Slush is a two-day international startup and investor event, organized annually in Helsinki, Finland. (来自Wikipedia)

媒体对此也有报道:

Slush, one of the world’s most prestigious startup events from Finland, has just closed its first-ever summit in Shanghai yesterday, featuring a stellar lineup of speakers, entrepreneurs and investors. Along with the exciting talks on the main stage, fifty amazing startups from the fields of e-commerce, VR/AR, big data, education, healthcare and enterprise services appeared before a great set of judges and audiences from the local and global startup community. They pitched, answered questions, but in the end, only one company could win the battle. （来自Technode)

这个比赛他用了两天的时间来做准备，时间上还是有些仓促的。以下是他的演讲稿，我们一起从里面学点英文。红色标记出来的句子是实用的口语表达，在每段后是我简短的评论。

附Justin照片一张，这个角度很霸气啊！

Hi everybody! My name is Justin, and I am Evangelist from 助理来也, also known as Laiye. We are an on-demand personal concierge company powered by AI and human assistants.

先介绍自己和公司，贴心的报出中文名和英文名照顾不同的听众。然后用一句话介绍自己公司是干什么的，这一句话里关键字满满。顺便问concierge你会读吗？

You probably have tried intelligent personal assistants like Siri, Cortana, and Google Assistant, but when it comes to getting things done, you go back to your dozens of apps, hopelessly. Let's say, you use Didi and Uber for rides, Eleme for food delivery, Ctrip for air tickets, and so on.

Three problems: first, you'd have to download all these apps, many of which you don't use much, sign up and learn how to use each app; second, you may panic when dealing with certain low-frequency needs, say getting a repair man to fix your toilet; third, navigating through all the layers of menus and pages, click, click, click, is a nightmare.

因为是要口语表达出来，清楚易懂是关键。这两段给听众设定了一个日常生活中的场景，为下面的介绍作铺垫。

This is where Laiye comes in. We have both AI bots and human assistants. We have a simple and easy-to-use interface. And we offer over 30 services, such as smart calendar, ride hailing, coffee delivery, errands running, cleaning, you name it.

Simply text us your needs, and we will get things done for you. Say you may try "get me a ride please", or "cheapest air ticket from Shanghai to Tokyo next Monday", and we will get a ride and a ticket for you. Hassle free.

Even better, as you get to use our product more, we will get to know you better, which means we can make recommendations and offer solutions based on your likes and dislikes, budgets and habits. In so doing, we make everything easier for you. We save time for you.

“助理来也”有何不同之处呢，开始夸自己吧，层层递进，呼应前面提到的麻烦。

另外注意这里的in so doing不是错误，而是一个地道的表达，和in doing so是一样的，稍微换一下位置显得不落俗套更厉害的样子...  同样的表达还有by doing so, by so doing, of doing so of so doing也都可以。

Here is one example. For our cab users, regular routines can be learned by machine and used to invoke proactive anticipations. Such context-based recommendations have high conversion rates, around 50% for ride hailing and 33% for coffee delivery. Oftentimes no input from the user is necessary. Just one click.

So Laiye is AI-driven, smart, efficient, and scalable. 

用一个日常的例子补充说明，同样呼应了最开始提到的麻烦 --  这里是"one click" 上面是"click, click, click"，哪个更方便？到这里，公司是干什么的就介绍完了，下面得说说其它方面了。

As for the addressable market, we target the growing middle class. They are getting more sophisticated and efficiency-conscious. They tend to have more money than time, and are willing to pay up to save time. Unsurprisingly, most of our users are in their late twenties, like myself, and live in first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

A few metrics to highlight. Since our launch in July of last year, we have acquired over 1.5 million users, largely through word of mouth and a couple successful marketing campaigns. Over 70% of our users have an iPhone. Also, we have totaled over one million close-loop transactions. Last but not least, the AI response rate has reached a remarkable 75% high.

讲完了产品，讲市场定位，然后用数字说明。

None of this would be possible without our stellar team. We are based in Beijing and Shanghai, and have about 60 people. As you can see, both CEO Guanchun Wang and CTO Yichuan Hu hold a PhD in Machine Learning, one from Princeton, the other from UPenn. The duo are also serial entrepreneurs, and sold their first startup to Baidu. Our COO Ji Gu has an MBA from Stanford, and has experience in the corporate world. As Evangelist myself, I have degrees in English and Liberal Arts.

Also, I am proud to say we are among a handful of Chinese startups that got admitted to Y Combinator. And in the pre-A round we raised a total of 4 million USD from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed, and Zhenfund. Having Microsoft's backing gives us tremendous confidence too.

To recap, we are Laiye, and we connect user with commerce in a delightfully human way. If Microsoft sought to give everybody a PC, we aim to give everybody a virtual assistant that works. Thank you!

最后附上这次比赛的视频。

前面的部分能听出来是有背诵痕迹的，不够自然，后面的自由问答部分就好了很多。他自己也说如果把背和自由发挥再平衡一下，效果会更好。能在两天的时间准备成这样，我认为已经很棒了。

之前推荐过的Justin的原创文章：

英文写作“字词句段篇章”之“句”

↓阅读原文看Justin的原创英文文章