Pitch Preparation

Who this is for

Founders with investor meetings booked or about to be, who have the facts and not the narrative.

What you'll actually decide

The story: what the problem is, why now, why you, and what the money buys — in the order that survives an investor's attention span.

What first-time founders get wrong here

Opening with the product. The first slides have to establish that the problem is real and urgent, or every feature after that lands on someone still deciding whether they care. The other one is a slide count that assumes you'll get to talk uninterrupted.

The first 10 questions

This is where the conversation starts. Each answer shapes what gets asked next.

1. 01What are you raising — how much, at what stage, and for what? Pre-seed, seed, Series A?
2. 02Who are you pitching — a specific investor or firm, a general search, or an accelerator application? The audience shapes everything.
3. 03What does the company do, and why now? Give me the version you'd say to someone who knows nothing.
4. 04What traction do you have — revenue, users, growth rate, partnerships, key milestones? What's the most compelling number?
5. 05What is the market size, and how did you arrive at that number — TAM/SAM/SOM, or a bottom-up build?
6. 06Why will this company win? What's the unfair advantage — technology, network effects, team, distribution, regulatory position?
7. 07What are the 3 hardest questions investors will ask — the ones that make you least comfortable — and what are your honest answers?
8. 08What does success look like in 3 years? What does the company look like at the end of this raise?
9. 09What is the one-line narrative of the pitch — the through-line that connects problem to solution to market to team to ask?
10. 10What are the slides you need, in order? Standard decks have 10–12 slides — do you want a standard structure or a non-standard one, and why?

+ 6 more questions across discovery, validation, and the creative brief — each one adapting to what you've already said.

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