The two-sentence pitch — how billion-dollar companies are actually explained and why you should practise yours

On the stage of Startup Grind’s Global Conference, Mercury founder Immad Akhund does, in a 31-minute session, something few pitch trainings teach this concretely: he teaches the two-sentence structure with which he took his own company from idea to a $3.5 billion valuation. Mercury is an American banking service for startups, and its growth is a classic example of how a simple story beats a complex one when the audience’s attention is limited.

This is an unusually practical episode for the Finnish seller and founder. Most of us have been trained to pitch through the product’s features. Akhund’s two-sentence structure flips this: the first sentence tells what the company’s nucleus is, and the second sentence tells how big the vision is. Together these make a pitch the listener remembers and can repeat to a third person without the message diluting.

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Source: Startup Grind — The Two-Sentence Pitch (Immad Akhund, Mercury), 5 May 2026

What the structure is about

Akhund opens the two-sentence pitch so that the first sentence is the nucleus sentence. It answers “what does the company do?” in a way that is one sentence long, clear in words and free of fashionable terms. The second sentence is the vision sentence. It answers “how big can this grow?” in a way that shows the nucleus is only the opening — not just a single product’s description.

From Mercury’s own example: the first sentence is short — Mercury is a banking service for startups. The second sentence grows: eventually it is the full financial service replacing all of a startup’s transactions. The two sentences together give a picture that is simultaneously concrete (you know what you get today) and big (you know why this is a billion-dollar opportunity).

This structure is learnable, and it is applicable in practice more broadly than only by a pitcher seeking venture funding. It works equally well in a sales call, a customer presentation, a recruitment interview and even at a friend’s gathering when someone asks “what does your company actually do now?”.

Why this matters for the seller

The Finnish B2B seller usually works with a complex product. An engineering solution, expert service, software architecture — these are all products whose complete description requires dozens of sentences. But the customer who has to make a buy decision does not have time to read all of those dozens. They want first one sentence to understand what it is about, and one sentence to understand why they should care.

This is one of the most important skills in selling — and it is teachable. Toward the end of his session Akhund offers sellers a concrete exercise: write your own company (or your own role) in two sentences, and then test those sentences on three people who do not know the field. If they cannot repeat the description after you have left, the sentences are too complex. If they repeat it and then ask “how does this differ from a competitor?”, the sentences have landed — because now you have the opening to explain differentiation.

Why this matters for the founder

For the founder, the two-sentence structure is more than a sales tool. It is a strategy-sharpening instrument. When you have to force your company into two sentences, you have to make real decisions about what is the nucleus and what stays on the edge. This decision is often uncomfortable — because it means letting go of some customer segments, deprioritising some product feature, and pushing some side of the vision to a later phase.

This decision practice is one of the most concrete ways a young growth company improves its strategy. I have written earlier in Innohub that what decides a seed-stage VC call is the founder’s relationship to the problem and the defensibility of the market slice — not the beauty of the pitch deck. The two-sentence pitch is the short version of the same precision. Once it is honed, all other pitch materials (the 20-page deck, the data-room content, the email intro to the investor) naturally build around it.

A Finnish pitfall

There is a structural weakness in Finnish pitch culture that Akhund’s message exposes especially clearly. We have a tendency to start with the product description — “We offer a platform that enables…” — because we are an engineering culture in which the product’s technical merit is the natural starting point. But in the American pitch tradition into which Akhund’s message fits, you start from the customer problem and its significance — “Startups have a strange problem with financial services…” — and from there you move to the solution and its vision.

This does not mean a Finnish pitch should try to imitate an American one. It means a Finnish pitch should consciously contain both a customer-led opening and a product-led nucleus. Akhund’s structure offers a simple frame for this: the first sentence tells the customer-problem solution, the second sentence tells the size of the vision.

A second Finnish pitfall is excessive modesty in the vision. We tend to underrate our own goal — “we are building a better tool for HR teams” — when the American competitor describes the same product as “we are building the infrastructure of the future of work”. Either sentence may be true. But the latter affects investor and customer decision-making more. Modesty is a cultural virtue, but modesty in the pitch is often the shrinkage caused by a guess — and it costs.

What to take away

Akhund’s Startup Grind session is 31 minutes and is one of the best short pitch trainings published freely online this year. But its message fits into three guidelines a Finnish seller and founder can put on this afternoon’s to-do list.

First, write your own two-sentence pitch. First sentence: what is the nucleus the customer gets today? Second sentence: how big is the vision behind this? Don’t use fashionable terms. Don’t use industry jargon. Write so your mother would understand.

Second, test the sentences with three outsiders. If they cannot repeat the description in their own words after you have left, the sentences are too complex. Fix them and test again.

**Third**, use the sentences everywhere — in the sales call, in the email signature, on the LinkedIn profile, in the recruitment interview. Repetition makes them natural, and naturalness is the foundation of credibility. I have written earlier in Innohub that choices build the brand more than messages — but choices and messages together are the combination that separates a growth company from one that does not grow.

Akhund does not promise that a good two-sentence pitch makes your company a billion-dollar company. He promises that a bad pitch closes the door before your company even gets to show what it can do. This is a small difference — but it decides how many doors open.