An investment-winning pitch is as much about the things you do as the things you don’t.

I’ve worked with founders from pre-product, pre-revenue seed rounds right through to Series B.

And it always comes down to the same things.

This is the classic scenario.

The founders walk in dressed to impress. They’ve got a deck packed with FOMO-inducing market figures and a tech walkthrough like something out of Star Trek.

And it bombs.

Here’s why. The number one thing investors want to know is what they’ll be getting themselves into and who they’ll be getting into it with.

It’s not about your technology, your traction, or your market size. It’s about you.

To show you what I mean, here are my four dos and don’ts of investor pitching.

1. Do make your tech approachable

Investors are never going to understand everything your product does in a 10–20 minute window. And the good news is that they don’t need to.

Yes, most of the money you raise will be poured into product development. But that doesn’t mean you need to walk investors through every feature you’re going to build.

Remember, tech is a tool that supports your startup’s goal. It isn’t the goal of your startup.

So, when talking to investors about your product, focus on the organizational process it will transform for the better. Make your tech approachable and relatable in a way that helps investors realize its purpose, not its functions.

Let me say that again: help investors see your product’s purpose, not its functions.

Put it in simple terms they can quickly understand as part of your bigger story. After all, it wasn’t your technology that got you that meeting — it was you.

2. Don’t try to be someone you’re not

I’ve already explained how your story is more important than your technology. Now let’s talk about how you tell it.

The key here is authenticity.

For first-time founders, investor pitching is a big deal. So they feel like they have to be a big deal too.

We all have those moments where we try to use fancy terms or jargon to sound clever, or like we know a little bit more than we really do. But in investor pitching, that will get you nowhere.

Especially when your investors start asking questions.

I know you want to raise a lot of money. And I know this is uncharted territory — especially if you’re presenting in a language that isn’t your native tongue.

But editing your voice kills your authenticity. And investors crave authenticity.

Here’s the golden rule: investors don’t need to know what you do, they need to feel who you are. Put yourself at the heart of your story and no language, vocabulary, or visual barrier will stand in your way.

3. Do focus on one clear message

We’ve talked about what not to do. Now onto what you should do.

Let me start with a couple of quick examples:

  • Restaurant A — “We make buttermilk chicken burgers that blow New Yorkers’ minds”
  • Restaurant B — “We make hamburgers, beef subs, bagels, hot dogs, rice boxes, fries, and salads”

By the time you reach the end of this article, I bet you’ll already be struggling to remember everything Restaurant B makes. But when you sit down to have dinner tonight, you’ll still be thinking about Restaurant A’s buttermilk chicken burgers.

And the same is true for investors. They have short attention spans just like you and me. So you need to simplify your story in a way that makes it easy to understand, remember, and share.

For this, I recommend the rule of one. It’s very simple:

  • One audience — who is your product for?
  • One problem — what’s their biggest pain?
  • One solution — how are you going to transform their lives?

For many founders, this can feel counterintuitive. Surely the more problems you solve, the bigger the market, and therefore the bigger the investment — right?

Wrong.

The number one goal of your pitch is to make your investors feel connected to your purpose. And for that you need to make your one audience, problem, and solution shine as bright as possible.

4. Don’t expect your old titles to win you the pitch

Investors don’t care that you were the Chief of Whatever at Wherever. They care about your idea and what you’re going to do next.

Now that doesn’t mean you can’t talk about your past.

If you’ve lived the pains your early adopters will be facing, share those experiences. This will help to illustrate founder-market fit — in other words, why you’re perfectly positioned to solve this problem.

But just don’t expect your titles to do the job for you. If you treat your investor pitch like a CV interview, you’ll just end up wasting your time and theirs.

Here’s a quick comparison to show what I mean:

  • The wrong way — I was a Project Manager at Ogilvy for five years. After that, I moved on to Leo Burnett, where I was promoted to Head of Project Management. A few years later, I became the Operations Director at WPP and, for the last four years, I’ve been working at Publicis.
  • The right way — I was the Operations Director at Publicis during the pandemic. During that time, we faced massive challenges presenting creative ideas over Zoom. And in the new normal of hybrid work, that problem hasn’t gone away.

When you get things right, you can leverage your credibility while weaving it into your story.

Final thoughts

It may sound simple, but all my advice comes down to this: be yourself when pitching to investors.

When trying to outperform yourself, you lose the authenticity that all investors are craving. This is especially true in early-stage funding.

Think of it this way. Every founder that pitched before you had a great product, a great promise, and an optimistic view of traction and growth.

The true differentiator is you. So tell your story right and the rest will follow.