Stop Explaining Your Startup
Lessons learned from giving the right pitch to the wrong people
I want to tell you the story of a time I got my pitch totally wrong.
I was at Venture Cafe in Cambridge, sipping beer and meeting new people. I’d recently graduated from a highly-ranked MBA program and my startup Atlas Urban Farms had just shipped our first piece of hardware. I was feeling confident. I was speaking to an investor, and when he asked what I did, I replied with something I thought would get his attention.
“I’m a farmer,” I said.
I might as well have told him I was radioactive. In that room, full of unicorn hunters, “farmer” signaled low margin, no scale, and no exit multiple. The investor made some excuse to get away from me. I thought I was being very funny, since I wasn’t literally a farmer, but that bit of self-amusement cost me a potential ally. Unfortunately, this wasn’t just a one time thing; it was a pattern I had to unlearn.
I hadn’t actually given the wrong pitch; I had just given it to the wrong person. I’d made the incorrect assumption that clarity meant the same thing equally to every person. Years later, I gained instant credibility with growers by demonstrating that I’d gotten my hands dirty, that I knew how to nurture a plant from seed through germination to harvest. With growers, “farmer” signals empathy, experience, and trust. But when I tried to talk to those folks about our technology or business model? Blank stares. They just didn’t care about those topics.
It took me a long time, and a lot more pitches, to understand that I was never going to have just one pitch. I had to have dozens of pitches, each tuned to the correct audience. The heart of the pitch, Atlas and what we did, stayed the same, but I highlighted different aspects based on the audience. This might sound complicated. You’re right. It takes countless conversations to build up the mental map of how different people respond to a pitch. Each person is running their own mental model of risk, asking “is this person worth more of my time?” It can be tricky figuring out what each person needs. Pitches succeed when you satisfy the internal risk model of your audience, not based on your enthusiasm or clarity.
Early on, I optimized for accuracy, but what I really needed to aim for was relevancy. A good pitch puts some questions to rest, and invites the audience to ask more. I’ve included three frameworks for pitches I gave, depending on which questions I wanted the audience to ask, and how relevant the answers would be for them specifically.
1. Trajectory + Leverage
This answers the question “where is this company going, and can I influence it?” Your audience is evaluating your strategy, direction, optionality, and whether they can actually make an impact. Show that you are a clear, visionary thinker making reasoned assumptions and taking concrete steps to validate them. You’ll want to give this pitch to advisors, early champions, and maybe some angel investors.
Example:
“Atlas is building the translation layer between plants and humans; a system that turns environmental data into actionable agronomic insight. We focus on finding the clearest wedge where our tech capabilities compound into fastest crop benefit outcomes.”
2. Risk + Return
This pitch answers the question “how does this become a profitable business that grows and scales?” A very common mistake here is explaining how the company works (tech) rather than why it works (unit economics). This is where you show off things like market size and defensive moat. Don’t get flowery with your language; this is for most investors and anyone who might be spending their budget on you.
Example:
“Atlas is a software platform that turns environmental data into predictable yield and quality outcomes. Growers pay because even small consistency improvements materially increase revenue, and our data models compound over time.”
3. Trust + Relief
This pitch answers the question “will this make my life easier?” This is when you show how you solve pain points, save time and money, and boost productivity. This isn’t the time to show how smart you are; it’s the time you show that you understand their pain.
Example:
“Atlas helps growers spot environmental problems before they lead to lost revenue. It’s a system that notices when things are drifting, before you feel it in your harvest or on your bottom line.”
You Can Do It Too
Most founders default to one pitch because they are overloaded, and memorizing one 30-second elevator pitch feels efficient. But like my farmer pitch to the investor, that approach leaves opportunity on the table. Match what you’re selling (product, equity, opportunity, purpose) to your audience. If you do it wrong, they’ll just drift away. If you do it right, they’ll ask you to say more. That’s how you win. A pitch isn’t an explanation; it’s a teaser. It should leave your audience wanting more. That’s how you go from the one-liner, to the elevator pitch, to the conversation that ends with them saying “send me your deck and let’s schedule a meeting.”
You don’t pitch to be correct; you pitch to earn the next question.
If this resonated with you, and you want to sanity-check your pitch, I’m usually happy to chat with founders. You can grab time here >> https://calendly.com/connor-17_b/30min
Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash