Elevator pitches can sometimes get too wordy …yada yada yada… startups can take some inspiration from Seinfeld

I, for one, have found endless inspiration to guide me in how to (and often how not to) interpret life’s challenges from an embarrassing amount of hours watching Seinfeld throughout the years. More specifically, from George Costanza.

And I’m not alone on this.

Bruce Brandes, who is managing director at Martin Ventures and serves on the board of advisors at AirStrip and Valence Health, has used many of the sometimes unconventional lessons derived from the show to influence his thoughts on healthcare, CEOs and startups.

He recently shared the next addition to his column series for HIStalk with “All I Needed to Know to Disrupt Healthcare I Learned from “Seinfeld”: Part V – Yada Yada Yada.” In this post he explores when it makes sense for an elevator pitch to be truly brief and when some meatier details might be worth while or essential.

In the beloved sitcom, George dates a woman who uses “yada yada” to gloss over some of the more wordy, and potentially incriminating, parts of her stories. Jerry enjoys this – he finds it to be a time saver. But it drives George crazy not knowing what information has been replaced with the illusive phrase.

So Brandes asks the question, when it comes to startups and pitches, or talking about new healthcare companies in general, when would a “yada yada” be appropriate? “Anyone still recovering from the HIMSS conference can likely recall many conversations where yada yada would have been a very welcomed interjection,” he playfully added in the post.

Here’s what he had to say on pitches and the pluses and minuses of brevity:

As discussed in an earlier column, most pitches are too long and generic. A little yada yada to help you explain your company in 60 seconds or less is very good. In calculating how to consolidate your elevator pitch, reread the Webster’s definition above and be sure to yada yada overused, now almost meaningless buzzwords like “patient engagement,” “big data analytics,” or “telemedicine.”

Instead, focus on concisely describing why your company exists, what problem you solve, and how you deliver that solution in a way that is clearly superior or more simple than the masses. Even 60 seconds might seem like a long elevator ride to your audience if you do not make a compelling initial impression in the first 15. Without the yada yada, you are not getting a first meeting.

In the end, Brandes points out that although it definitely makes sense to know when to use the figurative “yada yada” in pitches, there are also many times when providing critical, detailed information is very appropriate.

He provided some humorous examples of when the phrase could be used to omit some pretty important information sometimes lost in fine print:

• Q: Where does your system get all the data you are showing in your demo?
• A: Once you sign the contract … yada yada yada … we integrate seamlessly with your EMR.

• Q: How do you achieve your revenue projection of growing 20x in two years?
• A: We had meetings with people at both HCA and Ascension about doing pilots … yada yada yada …. we forecast 300 hospitals next year.

And then he had some fun looking at “yada yada” options in some of the memorable events in healthcare IT history.

• We acquired five more companies which will be integrated by next quarter … yada yada yada … we beat our forecasted revenue numbers. (every HBOC quarterly earnings call in the 1990s)
• We closed on our acquisition of HBOC … yada yada yada … our market cap dropped $9 billion today. (McKesson 1999)

• We are putting out an RFP to evaluate vendors and purchase a new enterprise electronic medical records system … yada yada yada … we bought Epic. (any academic medical center in the past 10 years)
• We are making great progress on our successful Epic rollout … yada yada yada … we are announcing major budget cuts to protect our bond rating. (that same academic medical center three years later)

Here’s a clip from the episode: