274. How to Pitch Your Startup for Beginners in 2026 | Bae HQ IncuBaetor 6/6

0:00What many first-time founders are obsessed with is how to get funding. And I'm going to walk you through that today, but also give you a lot of caveats because there's so many things that people make mistakes about and don't understand properly, which then means they can waste a lot of time and take them down the wrong path. So the first thing, which is the most important thing, is the best way to get funded is to have a startup worth funding. And if you focus on this, if you just get a really good business, if you make sure you understand your customers, you make sure you've got a unique hedge, these are all the things that make a good business.

0:32and too many people are too obsessed with how do I make it so that people invest in me. But if you just have a really good business, investors are going to come running after you. They want to invest in you because you've showcased you have an investable business. And let's get some tough love, right? Top venture capitalists. So venture capital is obviously where people who invest with the idea they want to get like 100 extra return, right? They see thousands of companies every year and only invest in a handful. they're fighting over the best startups while everybody else is chasing them you don't you need not only to be worth funding but to be able to communicate this clearly to investors chasing warm intros is a waste of time until you nail this you're trying to do something extraordinary and you need to be extraordinary and to sum that up right is that you can't just be like oh i've got a good idea i should get money no you need to be exceptional and most companies that try to get venture capital don't get it.

1:27So you need to think about this. You're going to be risking somebody else's money to make them money. That's why you're doing it. So take that really seriously. That's a responsibility you're going to have. When you've got other people's money in your bank account, you need to make sure that you're delivering on that responsibility. And venture capitalists, investors, they're all aware of the risk they're taking. But you need to understand too that there's a responsibility that comes with that investment. And if you can grow and scale without taking investment, then that could be a good plan too, right?

1:56One of the things that people forget about too is that rejection doesn't just mean because people don't like you, right? And it's very easy to take that seed mentality of like, I'm not getting invested in because people don't like me, because people think this, because people think that. It's like, actually, it could be nothing to do with you. And it could be, for example, they didn't understand what you're pitching. That is to do with you, right? You need to like fix up there. It could be, I've seen the idea before and that means that you haven't done enough research and maybe they've seen the idea before and it's failed and they can say okay they might need problems that you haven't seen before they might not be actively investing for many investors they invest in certain times of the year or certain types of their cycle and if they're not investing they're not going to invest in you simple maybe they didn't invest in your type of startup and that could be that you need to do more research before reaching out to them to understand what they invest in whether you meet their thesis it could be they don't see potential in your particular area of the market so even if they thought you were amazing they just don't see how it's going to make money so they invest maybe they're better batched direct competitor and in that case they wouldn't want to invest in you because well then they're like then sabotaging themselves in some way without sabotaging another investment and maybe they think the other investment has got a better potential than you do and it could be too that they don't think you have an edge and this is a very common thing is that sometimes you see somebody's come out of something which is a problem.

3:17Cool. It's a problem. Okay. I need solving. But do they think you're the right person to solve it and you can build this into a large business? Another important thing to note too is that often no reply is a reply. The fact that they haven't replied to you, if they've seen the email, they've seen your messages and they're not really that keen, that probably tells you quite a lot. And knowing when to be persistent and when to give up is also an important skill. So when you're looking at getting rejected from startups or when you're looking at getting rejected as a startup for investment is what everybody goes through.

3:47It's very normal. And also so many people get many, many rejections, say Airbnb, before finally getting somebody who understands. So it could be that like your idea sucks, or it could just be that you're talking to the wrong investors. And being able to understand that, iterate on top of that, and really understand the needs of what the investors are looking for is really going to help you to get the investment that you want or what you need. So when we look at how to make sure that you're an investable business. Here's a one-page startup script, right? So this is from like my book, Startups Outers.

4:19But you should be able to answer all of these things in a single line and be super, super clear. We're solving this problem for this customer segment. That's super clear. You're not solving it for everybody. You're solving it for the customer segment, which has the most hair on fire problem for this. And why are you solving it? Because of this. This is the pain it causes them. And if they haven't tried anything else, it's probably not a bigger problem. If they haven't even bothered to try and Google for solutions or they haven't paid anything beforehand or they haven't tried to come up with a workaround, they're probably not going to pay for your solution.

4:55So that's all before you even talk about what your solution is. Now you look at, okay, we're building whatever it is. And don't use jargon. Don't use crap in here. Don't use marketing speak. Use we're building exactly what it is in the most simple terms possible, which is better because and then the 10x feature i was the thing that makes you so much better than the other options that your potential customers have your potential is and this is market sizing so we'll come to this in a bit later on as well in more depth then we're the best to build because and this way you need to really cut through of what makes it that you're going to win even if somebody else has the same idea as you and same solution as you how you're going to be able to monetize how you're going to be able to gain customers so what's your distribution channels what's your vision, so your big, hairy, audacious goal, how you're going to measure success, and then what your major costs are going to be.

5:45So all the answers to these questions, you should have them on the tip of your tongue, so you can answer them very easily. And if you go through, for example, this incubatory sync, if you do decide to go through the program, you're going to see examples of this as well. So I'm not going to show them right now, but if you go through the program, you can see this laid out for other companies. Okay, so the one-page startup script proves you have a good business. Now it's about how do you put that in investor terms. So when they're looking at your pitch and they're looking at your pitch deck, they're going to be looking at the four C's, right?

6:15Is what I'd be looking at as an investor. So I have angel invested six times, I'm an LP, a limited partner, a couple of venture capital funds, and you need to make sure you're ticking these boxes. Is it clear? Investors can't invest in something which confuses them. Are you credible? Does it seem like you can actually live up to whatever you're saying you're going to do? is it contagious does it seem like this is a really okay wow like this is a great idea i can see it's going to like take fire and they want to tell the other team members about it they want to other people in the industry like oh look this person's doing this which is such a big problem i'm so glad they'll be able to fix it commercial do you actually have the numbers can this actually make money if you're looking for investors who are financially orientated they're going to want to make sure wherever they're investing it it's going to make money the next thing to look at and this is again, it's a half reality check for many first time founders, is what I call the traction team tool.

7:06So the greater the traction for your startup, the less relevant your team's pre-startup track record. If you've somehow got to 10 million revenue in your third month, nobody cares what school you went to. Nobody cares what your employment history is. Nobody care what you did before because that 10 million in revenue is more important than everything else. You'll get the funding. Now, on the other hand, if you come from an extremely incredible background, let's say you previously sold a company that was worth every billion pounds, then the way of the current traction is less relevant. So you have this kind of tilt, right?

7:41So ideally, you've got both strong, but the stronger one element is, the lesser requirement on the other side. So I don't know if you can see what I'm doing there if you're watching the YouTube video. So what you need to look at and be honest with yourself is that if you don't have that extreme background. If you weren't like first employee at Google, if you weren't, if you're building a health tech company and you weren't the professor of that at Oxford or Cambridge, then you're going to need more traction. You're going to be able to show, okay, we've started building this and this is like, we need to prove demand.

8:12When you have an incredible background, you don't need to do as much, but you have to be very honest with yourself. You can't say because you went to a university that was good or you worked at one company or another company that you suddenly think that everybody's going to invest in you because it's just not the case. So now let's look at the actual pitch deck. So the order of the slides here isn't like a hard and fast rule. It's you vary it depending on what's your strongest suits. So if you've got incredible traction, like put them on the first page, we've got 10 million revenue. You're going to get a meeting, right?

8:42Simple. Like if you've got 10 million revenue in three months, no matter what you're doing, you're going to get a meeting with that investor. If on the other hand, your team is incredible and you've previously sold companies for billions of pounds. Again, just put them on the first slide. If you put them on the first slide, they're going to want to talk to you no matter what you have on the rest of it. The general flow is looking at this. So welcome slide, which is your name, your startup, your one-liner. The problem. So when you're explaining the problem, don't over explain. Don't like, if it's an obvious problem, just like say, here's some numbers, which is shocking or use a story which is very personal to you which really makes a difference right so let's say for example that you're solving a particular disease okay actually did you know and maybe you're surprising people in this way that this many people suffer from the disease then next one is looking at a solution so what makes your solution so much better than everybody else on the market and it should be really obvious that you're a lot better than everybody else is if for example your team is somebody who experienced a problem personally you can put the team before the solution because you can say okay we had the same problem and you can talk about that a bit more depth on the product side so if you already have a product which ideally you do you can have a small video you can use screenshots you can use a storage you can show patents as well so if you've got a patent in technology that shows a level defensibility right on the market sizing so So ideally, you want to use bottom up.

10:09So two types of market sizing, top down and bottom up. With top down, it's where you say, OK, the size of this market is X billion according to some report by some consulting company. Ideally, what you're going to be doing is working from the bottom upwards. OK, this many people suffer from the problem in our original target audience. So and they can spend X amount on it per year. So we can see the total addressable market as this size. okay so when using bottom up that's more realistic what sometimes people do is say okay we're making a fitness company the total fitness market is 100 trillion so our total market visible market is 100 trillion it's not because you're a very small part of that industry so the more specific it can be in your time stamp and so on the more believable and realistic it is if you're just like oh we're going to capture five percent of the entire fitness industry when the fitness industry contains so many different elements, that's just not realistic, right?

11:08If, for example, it's my wearables, then it's a bit more specific, right? It's useful to do that. So I put the TAM, SAM, and SOM there. So TAM is total addressable market. So that's generally the global market of the, if you captured every single potential customer across the world, what would that look like? SAM is serviceable addressable market so this is looking at in your particular focus for the next however many years how what's a total market you could get there so let's say you're focusing on the UK or Europe what's the size of the market there and then the sum is a serviceable addressable serviceable obtainable market which is how much of that SAM can you actually get so let's say look at wearables okay you're going to capture five percent of the market okay cool that's going to be x amount per year so that's the market sizing then on the team side like i mentioned before war is your exceptional so if you're building something a certain area just using the logos or saying like oh i did a tedx or i did this or i won this award is irrelevant you need to know what makes what information can you give them to prove that you're the kind of person who can make them a ton of money and if for example you are like early in your career or you're making a big pivot the stuff you've done previously in your career or previously in life can still make a big difference so many startup founders have really good sports backgrounds for example i was forming national squad in martial arts when i was younger that shows people that i've got a certain level of grit there's people who were high level in dance maybe they're high level in something else you basically just want to show like where have you proven that you are high level in something to show that you've got that kind of grit and the determination that they're that you're worth investing in obviously if something's relevant that's obviously better because like i said for example if you're building a longevity company and you're the professor of longevity again very good right you're building an ai company and you were previously the head of ai at like a multi-billion dollar company again that's going to help you really well because it's going to be direct both strong reputation and and that strong reputation is in the relevant sector now looking at traction so we've got order here it's obviously the best traction of course is like if you have like billions of profit but realistically for your early pitch tech it's going to be the best thing you say is like how much revenue you're making and how quickly it's growing maybe it's in high value customers so you've secured contracts with like with Microsoft and like Amazon and people like that testimonials from high value people if you've got a ton of pre-orders again very good if you've got a long wait list and all of these things are above vanity metrics right social media followers doesn't really matter unless those people are actually going to buy next is which i think a lot of people miss out is also like go-to-market distribution how are you going to gain customers how are you going to keep your cat low so your customer acquisition costs how are you going to make sure that you're able to reach the people that are going to buy your products because if you don't have a way to gain this you're probably not going to do very well next is competition who are the players what makes you different and it's a key thing here what makes you different can't be like oh we care about customers and nobody else does because that's just like everyone's going to say that.

14:22What makes you different is to be something that's provable. And you can say like, we're the only ones doing this and our competitors aren't going to pivot to this anytime soon because it wouldn't make sense for their strategy. Business model, how are you going to make money? Why is it the best? If you've got revenue forecast, that's great. And you can say, okay, we're going to charge people this amount to make this much money. And that's the business model. And then finally, the ask, like how much money are you looking to raise? Why are you looking to raise that much? and if you've already raised some of it, show that progress.

14:50Okay, we've already got this investment. If you can name other venture capitalists or maybe you can name high value angel investors, that's also going to really help you. So at this early stage, this pitch deck is going to be iterated a lot of times. And I think what sometimes people forget is the pitch deck is going to be constantly updated because you should be keep making more and more progress in the actual business and keep getting clear on your messaging. So that's totally normal. you make a pitch deck and the first pitch deck doesn't have to be perfect you can use that pitch deck to get the feedback and the information you need to get to where you want to get to this is the final episode in our incubator async series so it's episode six of six if you wanted to go through assignments to help you to put what you've learned into action you can either wait for the next incubator cohort and sign up our website or you can choose to do it asynchronously to everybody else and get feedback directly from us and the BayHU team on each of the different areas we covered to help set you up and to help you grow.

15:51Hope you've enjoyed this. Take care.