Forget the elevator pitch. You only get four words.

If you want to start a business or launch a new project, you need to be able to describe your effort in four words.

Why four?

If you write a longer story, the door cracks open to ambiguity; you can start to hedge your bets, get vague or abstract. Stick with four. It means you must identify a subject, an object, a verb and maybe one descriptor or refining notion.

If this sound impossibly hard, then keep at it. What can you strip away from your self-description to get down to four words? Yes, it’s arbitrarily too hard to be reasonable, but try it!

Here’s my take on a few well-known companies:

Pinterest: Organize everything you love.
Facebook: Hear from your friends.
Google: Easily find useful information.

“There’s no better way to force a conversation about what your team values than to write your four-word story.”