Hi, it’s Joshua.

Last month, I had an opportunity to pitch my startup to 10+ VCs in a Hackathon. Unfortunately, I failed in the second round. But it found common things in people who pitched to investors successfully and who did not. Here is the thing that I discovered:

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

1. Time distribution

You might have experience or not, but keep in mind - in an ordinary meeting, you have only 10 minutes. So make sure your pitch is no more or less than 10 minutes. For this, the time should be allocated properly for each pitch deck content. Below is the time allocation for my pitch.

I noticed some pitches overly focused on the team or product, neglecting market and competitor details. Some people spend most of their time talking about the market and competitors but no introduction about their team and product. So double-check if your pitch deck doesn’t make the investors ask you unnecessary questions.

2. Voice tone

Voice tone does matter. Not only to customers but also to investors. It’s about your confidence level and persuasiveness. So I analyzed how the successful pitch sounds like by their voice emotion. Our voice emotion feature has 24 emotions, we selected only the top 5 emotions on each pitch.

We analyzed many successful startup pitches that are awarded in Techcrunch. Above is the one of the case. For instance, “Determination” voice emotion is commonly observed. And you couldn’t find any of “boredom”, “shame”, “guilt”, “disappointment”, “calmness” emotion.

On the other hand, in bad pitch below “Determination” emotion is hard to find.

3. Bad language habit

If you’re running out of time in pitch competition it’s probably because of your bad language habit. It’s also called “Stutter”, we ran our model to analyze this.

This shows how much you prepared your pitch or matter of your habit, so if you have such a bad language habit, consult with professionals.

4. Value proposition

Your value proposition should be always clear. For this, YOU HAVE TO explain your target customer and the problems you’re trying to solve within 10-20 words. According to Steve Austin, a business consultant with 20 years of B2B consulting experience.

Focus on benefits, not features

I always keep this in mind but cannot always do what I say because I’m a builder. Builders tend to all the technical things and fancy features. So you always have to remind yourself of this and push yourself to the business mindset.

It’s really common for technical founders too focused on features and latest tech stack and not generate any revenue. Eventually, people around him all leave.

Differentiate from competitors

There are always competitors. Your value proposition should distinguish your offering from those of your competitors, highlighting unique features or benefits that others don’t offer.

Remember, your revenue is “Number of customers X Product price”

Builders must earn customers’ trust by gaining more loyalty. Focus on “Number of customers” by clarifying your value proposition. Then, move on to the marketing.

5. Conclusion

• Make sure you’re distributing time properly

• Practice your voice tone and get rid of bad language habit

• Make your value proposition unique