Pitch Forward Posted 2025-4-4 Updated 2025-5-12
On LinkedIn, I just saw a post discussing "what's needed" to pitch at every round. (I unfortunately lost the item before I could grab a link.) It got me thinking. I observed that this is pitching from your accomplishments, your past. It's backward-looking. It's far better to look forward in a pitch. Let's explore.
I am about to use a lot of abbreviations. Most of them are standard start-up jargon. I'll put a glossary below.
At a basic level, startup businesses go through similar phases of maturity, with each phase building on the previous. Here's my simple view:
Phase 0: Refining a Concept to (hopefully) solve a problem that some group of people/companies have.
Phase 1: Developing the Concept into an MVP and showing it to (hopefully) relevant people to get feedback.
Phase 2: Developing your MVP to get to Initial Product. PMF is the goal, but you might not quite get there.
Phase 3: Get from Initial Product to OMF - offering-market fit. Remember, it's not what you sell (the product); it's what customers buy (the offering).
Phase 4: Initial scaling of delivery and transition of GTM to repeatable Sales.
Phase 5: Scaling everything and tuning Marketing to to reduce CAC.
Phase 6+: Scaling and optimizing all operations.
Not all companies will follow this progression and, despite what you think I did, Phases 1-5 do not - necessarily - line up with Series Pre-seed, Seed, A, B, and C. It's just setting the framework for the discussion. However, for simplicity, let's assume you are going to pitch at the start of each phase.
What does that pitch look like? According to the LinkedIn article, the pitch for any phase should check off the previous phase. I agree that that's important, but it's not the pitch. Rather, the pitch should look forward. "Given the platform established by the previous phase, here's what and how we deliver in this phase... toward the vision of three or four phases hence."
And note that such a pitch leads to an obvious answer to the perennial question of "use of funds". The funds being raised will provide the resources to do the "what and how". The funds can easily be shown split up by various uses that trace back. And the milestones are what has to be achieved to get the next round of funding - they are the "why" to complement the "what and how." Which brings us full circle to the original article I read.
This way of thinking also answers the perennial questions of "What is 'traction' and how much is enough?" The answer simply is, "enough proof that you have completed the current phase and can execute the next" with "enough" defined by each investor's taste. Yeah, that's not a great answer, but it is the answer. At each stage, the investors want confidence that you can get to the next, without running out of cash, demonstrated by your execution and achievement in the current phase.
Which leads to an obvious discussion: when do you do a bridge instead of a 'round' of funding? The answer is above: it's a necessary condition for a round that you demonstrate sufficient achievements to give the investors confidence. Or - and this is a lazier way of thinking about it - if you have revenue sufficient to get the valuation you want, do a round. Going the right direction - have revenue - but not there yet? Do a bridge, preferably a convertible with a substantial (e.g., 20% or more) discount. Just be careful - a bridge may indicate to investors that you underestimated the costs and difficulty, so they will certainly be thinking, "What's different this time?"
There's not a lot of mystery here. The "perfect" pitch will not get you funding if you don't have the proof points. Execute, and your deck need not be perfect. Just make it forward-looking.
Glossary
MVP - Minimally Viable Product - something that works well enough for customers to play with
PMF - Product Market Fit - something that some group of customers will pay to use
OMF - Offering Market Fit - the group of products, software, and services that some group of customers pay for. Your PMF is part, usually not all, of what a customer needs to get value.
GTM - Go To Market - How you will Market and Sell your product
Repeatable Sales - a replicable process which gets you from leads to sales, usually including standardized processes, pricing, agreements, and order entry... and training for salespeople thereon. If you are not an experienced Sales leader, find one to help get this right.
CAC - Cost to Acquire a Customer - Take Marketing and Sales (total) and divide by the number of initial customer deals. Compare to LTV.
LTV - Life Time Value - how much revenue can you anticipate from a customer over the entire time they are a customer, including renewals and expansions.