Every day we run starts the same way. Up to twelve founders, a clock, sixty seconds each, before we have taught a thing. We film it. Nobody enjoys it. And the same seven things go wrong in that first round, whether the room is a university incubator or a cohort three weeks from demo day. Here they are, so you can hear yourself doing them.
1. Starting with your name
"Hi, I am Sam, founder of Thing, and we started in 2024." Three seconds gone, and the room has learned nothing it will keep. Your name is the least interesting fact you have. Open with the fact that is not what the room expected, then introduce yourself once they are listening.
2. Explaining how it works
The moment a founder says "so the way it works is", the listener's eyes go to the middle distance. How it works is for the second meeting. The minute is for what it does and why it matters, and a listener who understands that will ask how.
3. Nine ideas
The first round pitch usually contains the whole company: three features, two markets, a vision and a side project. A room can hold one. The hardest hour of the day is the one where each founder decides which of their nine ideas is the pitch, and lets the other eight go.
4. The apologizing body
Hands in pockets. Weight on one leg. Eyes on the floor or on the clock. A step backwards at the ask. The body tells the room the founder would rather not be here, and the room obliges by not being here either. None of this is about confidence as a feeling. It is a craft, and it can be learned by six o'clock.
5. Speeding up
Nervous founders talk faster, and a faster pitch sounds less sure, not more. The remembered pitches in any room are the ones with silence in them. A pause before the one word. A full stop after the ask. Speed is the sound of wanting it to be over.
6. Not saying the ask
Half the first round ends without an ask at all. "So, yeah, that is us." The other half says the ask and keeps talking, so it lands as an afterthought. The ask is one sentence, said to a person, followed by nothing. It is the only sentence the investor is actually waiting for.
7. Pitching the slides
Even without slides in the room, founders pitch as if they were there: "and on the next slide you would see". A minute built for a screen does not survive a corridor, and corridors are where most of the moments that matter happen.
By the third round
All seven are gone by the premiere at the end of the day, not because anyone was told off, but because each founder did the uncomfortable thing three times in front of a room that wanted them to get it right. That is the whole method. The first round is on film, the last round is on film, and the gap between them is what you take home.