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

Daniel Khachab · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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

Harry Stebbings · 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 · 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

Harry Stebbings · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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

Anish Acharya · 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 Technical command substitutes for polished pitch style

Christian Lanng · 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 · 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 · 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

Harry Stebbings · 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 Naming reasons not to invest reveals more value than a polished positive pitch

Rick Zullo · 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 · 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 · 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

Adam Fisher · 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 Storytelling that matters is customer selling backed by execution

Harry Stebbings · 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