Your Industry Is Not Broken: How To Build A Pitch Investors Believe

TalkX is a section of the LaunchX Online Entrepreneurship Program, where founders speak directly to our community.

Rajiv "RajNATION" Nathan is the Founder & Chief Pitch Artist at Startup Hypeman in Chicago, where he helps startups go to market and become the GOAT to market. His methods have helped startups raise over $100M, plus multiple millions in revenue growth. He has built more than 350 pitches and an extensive network of investors, and he evaluates the business behind every pitch, because a better story cannot fix a plan that will not work. Here is his advice on what goes into a pitch.

Want to know how he delivers a pitch on stage? Read the other article derived from our conversation with Raj: Practice Makes Permanent: Rajiv Nathan on Delivering a Pitch Under Pressure [hyperlink].

Describe the Problem the Way Your Customer Does

Founders usually explain the problem from their own point of view. Customers see their own problem differently, and their view is the one that counts. An analysis you assign to someone does not matter if they do not see it that way.

The same goes for market size. A $5 billion market means little unless you can describe one person in it. Describe that person's situation from their perspective, and people in your target audience will feel understood. People outside it will still see how your idea works.

Set Up Before You Show the Product

In the first 60 seconds, founders tend to jump straight into the product. Give the setup first, so the audience knows what problem your product answers.

Replace Buzzwords With Descriptions

At a typical startup event with a dozen pitches, 6 to 8 founders will say their industry is broken. A few slides later, many will say the market is growing. Both cannot be true, or the break does not matter enough. Words like broken, fragmented, and siloed are crutches that let you skip describing what is actually happening. Describe it instead, and your audience will understand you better.

Plan for Your First Customers

Rajiv coined the phrase "GOAT to market," which is also the name of his album. His reasoning: why be a unicorn when you can be the GOAT?

Do not paste your company description into ChatGPT or Claude and call the answer a strategy. It returns a long, confident answer that describes a sales funnel, which is the result of a go-to-market, not the plan for one.

Early stage, explain your exact plan to get your first 5, 10, or 50 customers or users. Later stage, explain what is working and how you will scale it. Some of it will be hypothesis, but it should rest on leading indicators from what you have already done.

Test Your Plan Against Your Budget

Sponsoring podcasts sounds like a plan. Getting traction takes several shows, multiple versions of the ad, and patience, since someone may hear it nine times before clicking. That needs at least a $100K budget, probably $500K or more.

Compare a community-led plan: 10 community partners identified, conversations with 5 of them, and 3 already willing to put you in front of their audience. That plan is more thought out and far cheaper.

Do Not Raise Money to Figure It Out

Investors do not fund a company because the market is big, since everyone's market is big. They want to know how you get the first five people in it. Saying you are raising money to find out is a weak reason to raise. Raise money to run a strategy you have already started and can see working.

Say Yes, Then Learn the Boundaries

Rajiv's own start in pitching came from a phone call. After his first company shut down, an incubator contact asked if he could help a team that had done poorly on Demo Day. He agreed within a five to ten minute call, then searched Google for what a startup pitch is.

The lesson is to say yes and learn fast. A pitch is a different form of storytelling, and once you know its boundaries, you can learn where to push them.

TalkX by LaunchX Entrepreneurship Program

TalkX is part of the flagship Entrepreneurship Program at LaunchX. Each session brings in a founder a few steps ahead of you, so you hear what they actually did, including what failed. Ready to build your own pitch? Explore the LaunchX Online Entrepreneurship Program. To learn more about Rajiv’s pitch coaching, visit Startup Hypeman.