The investor pitch and the story of a startup

Imagine you are on the stage, shaking knees hidden by the imposing podium. Or in a conference room, all eyes on you, slides behind you. Or just at your laptop, hovering over the "share your screen" button. You have been given a slot. Five minutes. Maybe ten. Or twenty . To present your pitch . And the faces in front of you or behind the video conference register yawns, indifferent stares, avid concentration on mobile phones - anything but a keen interest in what you are about to say. Sounds familiar?

In the startup world, the pitch is pitched as a gateway to open doors, for investment and more. There are pitch templates that promise to show you how to build the perfect pitch to wow investors. And hence start the endless pitch runs. These templates share the basics that are needed in every deck.

All in 10 slides.

Slides which need to include the problem being solved, your solution, the market size you are addressing, the competition, the business model and go-to-market, the team, the traction so far, the investment ask, plan for usage of funds, and the way forward. At early stages, the investors try to understand, the team, the TAM (total addressable market) and the traction, at the very least.

But though these templates are available anytime you search online, along with copious examples of templates that helped company x raise investment y, why is it so hard to really share a compelling narrative about your startup?

In our work with entrepreneurs across sectors, we have found a few common reasons.

First of all, I believe that specially for early stage companies, getting access to a market, finding customers who are willing to try their solution, confirm that it solves their problem and pay for it is the first step to building a profitable and sustainable venture. Not all companies need to even have an investor pitch. It purely depends on the entrepreneurs’ vision and growth plan. And in the haste to build the pitch, the one critical ingredient that gets missed is – THE STORY.

Why does it get missed?

First, the templates by themselves do not help tell the authentic story of your company that not just investors, but more importantly, your customers, can believe in. That goes for even beautifully designed and crafted templates.

Second, you as the founder and your founder team is a key part of the story. Your passion, your belief, and your unique style, especially at early stages, is a key part of your story and what makes it truly authentic and unique. How does the template customize for that?

Third, building a story, specially, for an early-stage company that is still trying to test its product market fit, pricing and other modalities, requires the same fundamental elements that a fiction writer would look at before crafting her story –

• The Character: the customer segment for whom the problem you solve is urgent and big
• The Conflict: what’s stopping the character from getting the solution they needed
• The Promised Land: the treasure your chosen character needs and which you chose to solve
• The right way: your solution and how you address the problem, acknowledging that there are others who will attempt it in their own way; becoming either your competition or your partners
• The Result: The end state you would be looking for which has to tie back to the customers' promise or treasure.

And depending on the problem you are solving and who it is being solved for, the insight from your story could lie in one or more of these elements. That means your starting point could be unique. The order of slides in the template could vary. The ending could vary. All the information investors and customers need to take their decisions could still be conveyed, but through your conviction and your authentic style.

If the story is something the co-founders spend time in developing, the pitch just becomes an outcome. And not an ordeal, timed in minutes and measured in slides and bullets.

Can we flip the perennial pitch question to build a strong story first such that the pitch really reflects who we are as people and as representatives of our dream, our company? Can that change the pitch from being just a template that looks remarkably similar to the last one which claimed to have raised a big investment round?

Stories are memorable. They are personal. And they inspire action. So the next time, someone asks for a pitch, let’s ask ourselves, are they really giving us a chance to tell our story?