Deliver your pitch confidently - 5 presentation tips for VC meetings (4/5)

Welcome to the fourth lesson in this part of the module. In the previous lesson we learned about the importance of answering the right question and how to use structure to improve how your answers to investor questions land. In this one, we’re going to cover why it’s important to deliver your pitch confidently and provide you with guidance on how to do so.

Let’s start.

Like energy, how confident you appear has a huge impact on how VCs view your team. To understand why, let’s take a moment to look at things from a VC’s perspective:

Imagine you’re on a call with a founder – they're building something people really need, ChatGPT for pets. The problem they're solving makes sense, the market seems big enough, and the team have great backgrounds. The founder says the plan is to get to $100m ARR in seven years, all they need is $1m to get started.

The deal looks good on paper, however, there's just one problem. The way the founder presented gave you what the kids call ‘the ick’. Throughout the meeting you noticed a bunch of yellow flags:

Whenever the founder was talking about numbers, he seemed really uncertain
All of his answers to your questions were long and rambling
During the pitch, you lightly challenged his go-to-market plan. You expected this to lead to a healthy debate, but instead he instantly agreed with you

You left the pitch not really trusting the numbers, and with the feeling that he would say anything you wanted to hear to get funded. It felt like he was scared of you.

What was the root cause of all his strange behaviour? Nervousness.

Confidence changes how VCs perceive your pitch in two ways. The first way is fairly straightforward. The more confidently you deliver a piece of information, the more likely VCs are to believe it.

The second way confidence interacts with your pitch is more profound. It makes VCs think that your team is better.

On some subconscious level, VCs believe that the best teams don’t need them. They assume that great startups can simply raise their hand and get money from twenty other investors on the strength of their team, product or traction.

As a result, VCs expect the founders of the ‘best’ startups not to seem desperate. They are used to great founders sounding confident, therefore, if you sound confident VCs will start to believe that you’re great also. They’ll automatically perceive you as better.

One of the funniest consequences of this, is that many founders get 10x better at pitching the moment they get their first term sheet. To put it crudely, the stench of desperation leaves them.

In light of this, the key question for you is, “how do I sound more confident when presenting?”.

How to present more confidently

While it’s true that some people are naturally more confident than others, confidence isn’t static. I've seen countless founders improve their delivery with time and practice.

So, to help you improve, I've put together a list of things you can do to sound more confident in front of VCs as well as things you should avoid doing because they damage how you come across:

Know your material and numbers inside and out
Practice your core pitch 10+ times
Practice answering investor questions you find tough
Defend your points of view (don’t crumble the first time a VC challenges you)
Present with high energy
Be honest about your business’ flaws (and how you’ll fix them)

Don’t

Self-sabotage by constantly apologising and caveating what you say to VCs
Be rude or arrogant (investors still need to like you to invest)
Let the fact that you’ve been rejected by 20 funds affect your meeting with fund #21
Pretend you have term sheets from other VCs when you don’t have them

While a few of these tips are quick fixes, the majority of them involve taking time to prepare and practice. I can’t reiterate this enough, when it comes to pitching, practice makes perfect.

For the next presentation tip, head to the next lesson.