How much do pitch framing and packaging determine fundraising outcomes versus the underlying business?

Paul Graham · published Sep 2012

Even the most convincing pitch cannot sell an idea investors don't like, so fundraising success depends on the idea as much as on presentation skill.

Airbnb nearly failed to raise after Demo Day; Fred Wilson passed, and they succeeded largely because Greg McAdoo happened to understand the vacation rental business.

source Black Swan Farming

Daniel Khachab · published Oct 28, 2024

Fundraising is entirely downstream of company performance — assemble great people, set a mission and strategy, work hard, put the numbers on an ugly slide, and hand it out

If the graph goes up and to the right you will raise money; if not it will be extremely hard, so the best way to fundraise is to make the company do well

Scope: there are still things you can do well or badly within the process

46:31 20VC: Why SaaS is Dead | Why AI First Companies Will Win | We are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent | Why Europe is F******* and We Need to Stop Whining with Daniel Khachab, Co-Founder @ Choco

Jason Citron · published Nov 25, 2024

Raising money is fairly easy when the business is growing fast and has genuine consumer love

Growth and consumer affection do the persuading for you

Scope: applies to fast-growing consumer businesses

37:16 20VC: Discord's Jason Citron on Why Everything We are Taught About Hiring & Management is BS | Do Richer Founders & Gamer Founders Make Better Founders? | Never Before Told Moments Behind Scaling to 200M Users

Johannes Reck · published Jun 23, 2025

From Series B and C onwards fundraising is decided by the numbers rather than the story

Without metrics to prove the business it is very hard to raise those rounds

39:36 20VC: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank | Why My Biggest Mistakes Came From Listening to VCs | Why 100 VCs Turned Us Down | Why European Founders Are Tougher Than US Founders with Johannes Reck, GetYourGuide

Max Junestrand · published Jan 26, 2026

If you build a good business, fundraising becomes easy

Scope: Max says he lives by this advice; he disclaims being a master fundraiser

54:25 20VC: From Only OpenAI to Die-Hard Anthropic: The Downfall of OpenAI in Enterprise | Harvey vs Legora: Legal AI is a Winner Take All | $7M ARR in a Single Day and Raising $200M Across 3 Rounds with No Deck with Max Junestrand, CEO @ Legora

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

A gripping but overly narrow description of your startup beats a vague, expansive one, because as a description approaches 'anything' its content approaches zero.

Investors discard abstract boilerplate as meaningless; the goal is only to convince them you're worth talking to further, so start narrow and flesh it out like incremental development.

Scope: early-stage pitches

source How to Present to Investors

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Because pitches blur together for professional investors, the first hurdle is being remembered, and the way to ensure that is a sticky descriptive phrase about your startup delivered early in the talk.

Professional investors hear a lot of pitches and after a while they all blur together, so the first cut is simply being one they remember.

source How to Present to Investors

Paul Graham · published Aug 2013

Founders should pitch investors in the same matter-of-fact, concise language they use among themselves, because grandiose marketing-speak doesn't work and reads as incompetence.

It not only doesn't work on investors but seems a mark of incompetence, and unclear explanations bore and frustrate them.

source How to Convince Investors

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Smart investors look for raw talent rather than polish and can see past superficial flaws, so trying to seem more corporate or knowledgeable than you are may conceal your talent instead.

Google was once a young company of technical founders with no office and turned out fine; experienced investors are probably better at detecting bullshit than a hacker is at producing it.

source How to Present to Investors

Anish Acharya · published Feb 9, 2026

Great founders must be able to fundraise, but they no longer need the polished go-to-market style of five years ago — authority derived from command of the technology and domain works just as well

The Korea founders pitched in matching kimonos drinking Celsius and won on quiet presence and technical command, the opposite of the archetypal MBA founder

52:32 20VC: Is SaaS Dead in a World of AI | Do Margins Matter Anymore | Is Triple, Triple, Double, Double Dead Today? | Who Wins the Dev Market: Cursor or Claude Code | Why We Are Not in an AI Bubble with Anish Acharya @ a16z

Harry Stebbings · published Aug 23, 2023

A founder who cannot pitch crisply has a dramatically reduced likelihood of winning

Founders have to sell to customers, investors and employees; failing at any one of those three starves the company of cash, revenue or talent

33:50 20VC: NEW FORMAT: Mega Funds Will Come Back, Why Markups Have Corrupted VC, Why RIFs Should Always Be An Embarrassment To SaaS Founders and Why Pitching is BS and Fake with Jason Lemkin and Rick Zullo

Cristóbal Valenzuela · published Aug 28, 2023

Products and models don't really matter; what matters is the people and the connective tissue between them — so founders should constantly emphasize the vision rather than assume it is obvious

The product you have today will change because those people keep changing it; he under-communicated Runway's vision because he assumed everyone already understood it, and they didn't

Scope: framed as his own biggest fundraising learning in hindsight

30:53 20VC: Why AI Models are not a Moat, Where Does the Value in AI Accrue; Startups or Incumbents, What the World Has Got Wrong About AI, Why AI Needs a New Story and Who is the Right People to Tell it with Cris Valenzuela, Co-Founder & CEO @ Runway

Paul Graham · published Dec 2020

Claiming nothing could go wrong is the worst possible answer; detailing risks in gruesome detail is far better, since a good seed-stage bet is a tiny probability of a huge outcome.

Experts respond to 'what could go wrong' with detail, and the partners already know the idea is risky; claiming invulnerability marks you as a fool or a liar.

Scope: seed stage

source Billionaires Build

Harry Stebbings · published Aug 23, 2023

A pitch doesn't have to be relentlessly positive — a founder who can name the top three reasons not to invest and how they'd mitigate them is revealing more valuable information than a polished sales pitch

It demonstrates self-awareness, knowledge of the ecosystem, and how the founder thinks strategically about positioning, flaws and resource allocation

35:15 20VC: NEW FORMAT: Mega Funds Will Come Back, Why Markups Have Corrupted VC, Why RIFs Should Always Be An Embarrassment To SaaS Founders and Why Pitching is BS and Fake with Jason Lemkin and Rick Zullo

Harry Stebbings · published May 15, 2024

A prepared FAQ section is a strong tactic because it pre-empts investor concerns and arms them with internal material to sell the deal to their partnership

It gets ahead of their concerns and gives them the material they need internally

47:08 20VC: Fundraising Wisdom that is Total BS; Dilution, Meeting Associates, Taking the Highest Price, Always Be Raising | Why Second Time Founders Are More Investable & Why Not To Hire People Out of College with Dan Siroker, CEO @ Limitless

Aman Narang · published Aug 21, 2024 · hedged

Founders should put more deliberate time into fundraising — getting good enough at it, including a proper pitch deck — rather than being purely customer-focused

You need balance: fundraising is an important part of building the company, not a distraction from customers

Scope: 'good enough', not great; their customer focus was itself rightful

21:09 20VC: Five Lessons Scaling Toast to $14BN Market Cap | The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make in Fundraising, Hiring and Selling with Aman Narang, CEO @ Toast

Sumeet Gajri · published Jan 17, 2020

How much data a founder should share with investors depends on stage: at early stage metrics matter little and the conversation should be about approach to market and narrative, while by Series D/E metrics are table stakes and expected

Early companies are still finding product-market fit and which KPIs represent the business; at scale, discussing metrics shows how good a handle the founder has on the company and their ability to pull levers, which is what late-stage investors writing $100m checks are assessing

Scope: stage-dependent

35:53 20VC: Portfolio Construction, Optimising SPVs, Opportunity Investing "Between Rounds", Being Distribution-Centric Over Product-Centric and Capital Concentration Within Funds With Sumeet Gajri, Chief Strategy Officer @ Carta

Sam Corcos · published Dec 11, 2023

How much theater a pitch needs depends on business type and stage: it is critical when pitching a big vision of the future, and unnecessary for a boring, consistent-growth B2B SaaS company where CAC to LTV and growth rate are all that matter

Scope: varies by business type and stage

42:52 20VC: Why Founders Should Take as Many VC Meetings as Possible, Should Founders Meet Associates, How to Get Intros to the Best VCs, How To Extract the Most Value From Your Investors, Why Post IPO Operators Are the Best Angels with Sam Corcos @ Levels

Sumeet Gajri · published Jan 17, 2020

Founders should start fundraising preparation six to nine months before going to market, identifying target investors, building relationships early, and A/B testing their narrative across those meetings while logging what resonates.

In this environment the market may write a $75M check for the same dilution as a $50M check, making the extra capital very cheap; everything else in the process should be set in stone except the final number

Scope: especially growth stage rounds; only if dilution is not materially different; requires the right partner

37:28 20VC: Portfolio Construction, Optimising SPVs, Opportunity Investing "Between Rounds", Being Distribution-Centric Over Product-Centric and Capital Concentration Within Funds With Sumeet Gajri, Chief Strategy Officer @ Carta

Sam Corcos · published Dec 11, 2023

If you have only one deck and one pitch, you're doing fundraising wrong — founders should test many different pitches, framings and languages and converge on the talking points that work

Trying different avenues of attack is how you determine which arguments land, and then you get really good at the three that always work

41:37 20VC: Why Founders Should Take as Many VC Meetings as Possible, Should Founders Meet Associates, How to Get Intros to the Best VCs, How To Extract the Most Value From Your Investors, Why Post IPO Operators Are the Best Angels with Sam Corcos @ Levels

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Investors' biggest fear about early startups is that the product is built on the founders' a priori theories and nobody will want it, so stories about specific users' problems are persuasive.

Greg Mcadoo said Sequoia looks for a 'proxy for demand' — evidence of people already doing something with inadequate tools.

Scope: early stage startups

source How to Present to Investors

Adam Fisher · published Jan 22, 2024

Storytelling that matters is one-on-one selling to customers — identifying their pain and explaining the solution — not stage or podcast performance, and it must be backed by delivered product, customer love and efficiency

You can't raise on a story alone; there has to be execution behind it

20:00 20VC: Why Small Markets are Better Than Big Markets, The Biggest Delusion of Early Stage VC, Why AI Investing is like a Horserace and Why The Most Ambitious Companies Growing the Fastest are not the Best Investments with Adam Fisher, Partner @ Bessemer

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Founders should state what they're doing in the first sentence rather than building up to it with a preamble.

Investors' main question about a very early startup is whether the product is compelling, and they can't judge whether you've built a good x until they know what x is; a preamble just frustrates them.

Scope: early-stage investor presentations

source How to Present to Investors

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Only a captivating public speaker can afford to delay saying what the company does, and most hackers aren't captivating speakers.

One founder pulled off a long opening analysis, but that's the exception; otherwise it's better to play it safe.

source How to Present to Investors

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Founders should mention how they plan to make money but not go into detail on the business model, because smart investors don't care about it in a brief presentation and any early business model is probably wrong.

Talking about it shows you've thought about it, but the substance is unreliable at this stage and isn't what smart investors weigh.

Scope: brief early-stage presentations

source How to Present to Investors

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Talking about the problem you're solving makes founders sound smarter than talking about the business model, and a spectacularly wrong business model will displace what you want investors to remember.

The business model is guesses about things outside your expertise; a boneheaded money plan becomes the memorable thing instead of the important problem you solved.

source How to Present to Investors

Christian Lanng · published Sep 27, 2023

Fundraising is a game and founders should deliberately withhold material — e.g. removing the team slide — to control which questions VCs ask

VCs always need to ask a question that makes them sound smart, so it's better to steer them to a topic you have full control over than let them ask uninformed questions about architecture

33:22 Steer vc questions by deliberately omitting material

Rick Zullo · published Aug 23, 2023

Pitching is bullshit and the whole venture ecosystem is over-focused on salesmanship; 10% less selling and 10% more substance would leave everyone better off

A pitch tests salesmanship rather than letting him understand the founder's actual understanding of the company

31:13 Pitching is bullshit industry overfocuses on salesmanship over substance

Rick Zullo · published Aug 23, 2023

The overselling that runs up and down the stack — founders to GPs, GPs to LPs — makes everything feel like a demo day and distracts investors from their actual job

His own Fund One pitch was terrible, and the LPs who backed them were the ones who took time to understand the team and process rather than judge the pitch; he looks for founders the same way

31:56 Overselling cascades through the whole stack distracting from actual substance

Rick Zullo · published Aug 23, 2023

The better meeting format is to cancel the pitch and spring the four or five specific questions you need answered to reach conviction

Founders who truly understand their business can talk through those questions; those who don't fail visibly and very early in the meeting

36:06 Skip the pitch and ask the specific questions that drive conviction

Josh Browder · published May 18, 2026

Minor changes in framing and pitch strategy can transform fundraising outcomes even when nothing about the company, team, or usage has changed

His seed pitch was rejected repeatedly, then after three small deck changes (adding a demo, aspirational comparable logos, and a subscription model) investors wanted to commit on the spot

23:58 Small framing changes flip fundraising outcomes

Harry Stebbings · published Jan 22, 2024

In the zero interest rate environment of the last two years, some great storytellers raised very large rounds despite lacking depth as operators

19:30 Zirp era storytellers raised big rounds without operating depth

Harry Stebbings · published Jul 13, 2026

It is much easier to succeed by selling a dream than by proving the numbers, and Israeli founders systematically undersell because they are realistic and direct rather than excitable

Storytelling ('Walt Disney') plays better than 'show me the money' (Jerry Maguire)

33:49 Dream narrative beats proof and blunt cultures undersell

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Startup pitches are typically people who are bad at explaining talking to people who are bad at understanding, and practically every successful startup was at some point turned down by investors who didn't get it.

Founders are picked for building things, not presenting, and the audience is mostly non-technical; failures of comprehension are probably always some of both sides' fault.

source Pitch failures reflect mutual miscommunication between technical founders and non technical investors not lack of merit

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006 · hedged

Graham now thinks he was wrong to emphasize demos so heavily, since very short Demo Day presentations work just as well with little or no demo.

Demo Day presentations are now so short they rarely include much demo, and they seem to work just as well.

source A demo is not necessary short presentations without one work just as well

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

A demo explains what you've built more effectively than any verbal description, and should be organized around the problem you solve rather than as a catalog of features.

Features shown in purpose-driven order communicate the solution; the order they appear onscreen doesn't.

source A demo communicates better than verbal description and should be organized around the problem not features

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

One person should talk while another operates the computer, because someone doing both will mumble at the screen and lose the audience's attention.

Politeness and habit keep the audience attending while you stand near them and look at them; once you turn to fuss with the computer their minds drift.

source One founder should talk while another operates the computer to keep audience attention

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Secondary matters like competitors and resumes should be compressed into single quick slides at the end, after you've made clear what you've built.

With only a few minutes, the time should go to what the product does and why it's great.

source Compress secondary details like competitors and resumes into quick slides at the end

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Speaking to a room requires a completely artificial voice and manner that everyday life gives no practice in, and the goal is to talk in that artificial way while seeming conversational.

Audiences tune out announcer-style delivery; as with writing, good delivery is an elaborate effort to seem spontaneous.

source Pitches require an artificial presentational voice that still feels conversational

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Speakers should err on the side of slowness; a rule actors use is that if you feel you're speaking too slowly you're at about the right speed.

source Speakers should err on the side of speaking too slowly

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Splitting the presentation among all founders to show they're equal partners is a mistake; pick the one or two best speakers and show mutual respect in subtler ways.

Investors dislike unbalanced teams, so the instinct is good, but partitioning the talk is distracting; respect can be conveyed, e.g. by praising a co-founder's ability.

source Pick the best speakers rather than splitting presentation evenly among founders

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006 · hedged

A technically expert founder speaking briefly as an 'expert witness' can add credibility even if the audience doesn't follow the details.

source A technical founders brief expert witness cameo can add credibility

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006 · hedged

Your own confidence in what you've built is probably the single biggest initial piece of evidence for investors, but it must be shown implicitly rather than declared.

Given short time and non-technical audiences, many listeners can't evaluate the product itself; explicit claims like 'we're passionate' get ignored or mark you as bullshitters, and nervous apology signals you don't believe your own startup is worth their money.

source Implicit confidence not explicit declarations is the biggest persuasive signal

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Slides should be pared to under 20 words and not read aloud, and cluttered sites demo badly — a reason to simplify the design itself.

People skip reading word-heavy slides; projected clutter is illegible, and cluttered sites are bad anyway.

source Keep slides under 20 words and simplify cluttered demos

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

Give a few specific numbers about your own startup, but not market-size figures, which don't matter compared with how you'd get there.

Numbers stick in people's heads, but total market size is like an aspiring actor citing Tom Hanks's earnings — irrelevant until you become Tom Hanks.

source Give specific startup numbers not market size figures in pitches

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

The fact that people currently pay a lot for something is evidence of user need, and investors are easy to convince that a cheaper alternative will find demand.

High spending demonstrates the need exists; a cheaper substitute that keeps what made the original popular inherits that demand.

source High existing spend on inferior solutions proves demand for a cheaper alternative

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006

The most persuasive user-need story to tell investors is the founders' own need, followed by the needs of people they know personally.

A remarkable number of famous startups grew out of needs the founders had, and experienced investors know this pattern.

source Founders own need then friends needs is the most persuasive demand story

Paul Graham · published Aug 2006 · hedged

Inability to describe your startup in one compelling phrase is a sign that your plans are insufficiently focused.

source Inability to describe startup in one phrase signals unfocused plans

Paul Graham · published Aug 2013

Inexperienced founders should convince investors by first understanding why their startup is worth investing in and then explaining that, rather than by working on the pitch itself.

Like lifting with your back instead of your legs, trying to convince with the pitch uses the wrong muscle; the startup itself should do the work.

source Convince yourself first then explain rather than crafting the pitch

Paul Graham · published Aug 2013

A startup's explanation must be clear and concise enough to survive being re-told, because it has to convince not just the partner you meet but the colleagues he repeats it to.

It has to convince at one remove, so YC's last step in pitch prep is imagining how an investor would sell it to colleagues.

source Explanation must survive re telling to convince the partners colleagues too

Paul Graham · published Sep 2013 · hedged

Slide decks are becoming unnecessary for phase 2 fundraising; many of the most successful startups never make one and simply explain their plans to investors.

Fundraising takes off fast for startups most successful at it, so they can excuse themselves by saying they haven't had time to make a deck; Graham admits this may be wishful thinking.

source Slide decks are becoming unnecessary for fast closing phase 2 raises

Paul Graham · published Sep 2013

Founders need a one-page executive summary written in matter-of-fact language covering the plan, why it's a good idea, and progress so far.

Its point is to remind an investor who may have met many startups that day what you talked about.

source A one page matter of fact executive summary is the necessary minimum pitch material

Paul Graham · published Sep 2013

Nerdy founders should not imitate a smooth salesman's closing lines; investors are fine funding nerds, so it's better to be a good nerd.

Nothing is less convincing to an investor than a nerdy founder delivering lines meant for a smooth one, and investors are fine with funding nerds.

source Nerdy founders should be good nerds not imitate smooth salesman lines