Move beyond slide decks to gauge a founder's true passion and product quality. By installing and using a product live during a pitch, investors can ask deep, contextual questions and observe the founder's unscripted responses, revealing a level of genuineness a presentation cannot.
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In a crowded space like voice AI, pitches sound generic. The founder of April found that investors who converted were those who used the product before the first meeting. The direct experience of a working product bypassed skepticism and made fundraising calls short and successful.
Instead of walking into a pitch unprepared, Reid Hoffman advises founders to use large language models to pre-emptively critique their business idea. Prompting an AI to act as a skeptical VC helps founders anticipate tough questions and strengthen their narrative before meeting real investors.
Rather than imposing processes after investing, VCs can use frameworks like the "sales sprint" as a pre-investment litmus test. Sharing the approach and observing the founder's reaction reveals their mindset. A founder who is eager to adopt a disciplined, customer-centric process is a stronger bet than one who must be forced into it.
In initial meetings with enterprise prospects, Nexla's founder didn't pitch a solution. He focused entirely on validating the problem. By asking, "Do you see this problem as well?" he framed the conversation as a collaborative exploration, which disarmed prospects and led to more honest, insightful discussions.
Instead of creating traditional pitch decks he wasn't skilled at, Perplexity's CEO successfully raised funds from prominent investors like Yann LeCun by simply sending a link to the product. This highlights that a compelling, working product can be the most effective fundraising tool.
The most effective product reviews eliminate all abstractions. Forbid presentations, pre-reads, and storytelling. Instead, force the entire review to occur within the actual prototype or live code. This removes narrative bias and forces an assessment of the work as the customer will actually experience it.
Contrary to traditional sales processes, the demo is the ideal moment for discovery. Prospects' defenses are down when viewing the product, making them more open. Prepare specific 'bridge questions' to ask before showing each feature to fill informational gaps.
Founders mistakenly believe a demo should showcase every feature to prove the product works. The real goal is to make the buyer feel understood. Show the minimum necessary to make it 'click' for them that your solution fits the specific demand they just described.
An experienced investor shares a five-point framework for great pitches: 1) Show, don't tell, 2) Use illustrative examples, 3) Synchronize visuals with speech, 4) One slide, one message, and 5) Get to the product in the first 15 seconds. This provides a repeatable system for founders to improve their presentations.
Great founders turn a pitch into a collaborative discussion by asking investors to identify business weaknesses. This signals curiosity, strength, and a desire for genuine feedback over just presenting a perfect picture. It demonstrates a coachable leader who is focused on gathering data to improve.
