Ingredients in a successful pitch: 1. I have a problem 2. You demonstrate that you can solve that problem 3. You demonstrate that your solution is faster

Ingredients in a successful pitch: 1. I have a problem 2. You demonstrate that you can solve that problem 3. You demonstrate that your solution is faster / less expensive / easier than rolling my own Handling number one is a matter of identifying and validating prospects. I have no advice there, I leave that to the sales team; they're much better at it than I am. Handling number two basically requires two things: your idea, whatever it is, and a demonstration that you can interoperate with my infrastructure to accomplish it. (Don't gloss over this, it's essential; if you're ever going to have more than one customer then you'll need to be able to work with multiple systems and gracefully handle the differences between them.) Handling number three requires at least a proof of concept implementation. It's absolutely possible to sell ideas that are simple enough that they can be "stolen" by just a handful of jotted-down notes -- but only if you can demonstrate that you can do it better, or faster, or cheaper than your potential customer can. That pretty much requires working code, not a "pitch" for something that doesn't exist yet. Here's an example of a "stealable" idea: Lots of companies need to test their development work against realistic-looking data, but can't just mirror sensitive data from production because it contains PII or sensitive client data. So the idea is an anonymizer that'll generate real-looking fake data based on your production data. Super simple idea, any org could "steal" that idea and build it for themselves. Or they could just buy it from one of the several vendors already working in that space, because it's cheaper and more predictable than DIY. To compete with DIY (not to mention NIH) you need to actually have something to sell, not just a sales pitch. Alternatively, think in terms of making your pitch to VCs, not customers. Businesses will want something they can use today, not something you'll promise to build for them if they pay you (or if they do, they'll likely want that to be as an employee rather than as something you could then sell to their competitors). Investors may be willing to fund you while you figure out whether your idea is feasible; customers are much less likely to.