the.com/roadshow
A pitch performed in enough cities that it starts to feel like the truth.
means A touring presentation — a show, sales pitch, or company promotion taken live to multiple cities in turn.
from Straightforward compound of 'road' plus 'show,' born in American show-business slang of the late 1800s/early 1900s for a theatrical or circus production that toured rather than settling into one theater. It migrated into radio and TV ('a roadshow broadcast'), then into business and finance, where companies now stage 'roadshows' — touring pitch meetings for investors before an IPO. The word kept its circus-tent energy even after it traded the big top for a conference room.
- origin
- term borrowed from traveling circuses and vaudeville acts
- finance use
- execs tour investors before an IPO prices shares
- real goal
- gauge demand without ever saying the word begging
- modern version
- same pitch deck, now over Zoom, still exhausting