5 Storytelling Tips That Improve Pitching for Startups

Storytelling is an important part of pitching for a startup — it helps engage with listeners’ imagination and it shows your vision of the future.

Below are 5 key storytelling tips that can be applied to fundraising for your startup, winning a pitching competition, or pitching to get into an accelerator.

1. Tell a story of your customer, not yourself

A common mistake I see is when a founder pitches their startup and tells a story of THEIR own founder journey and the struggles THEY have been through. This is not what we mean when we say — ‘tell them a story about your startup’.

Instead, tell a story of your customers, and their daily struggle, take a snippet of a moment in their life and relay it into words. Create a character or even get inspired by your customer avatar and talk about them. It will help you build an emotional connection with your audience and pull them into your pitch.

2. Who are you pitching to?

Even if it’s investors, they are different and invest at different stages.

Make sure you tailor your pitch based on your audience — whether it’s VCs or an accelerator.

Check if there is a list of things you have to mention to make it — sometimes you have to mention the round you’re raising, sometimes you don’t and you can use that time on talking more about your team or a bigger vision.

3. Have a clear and coherent structure

An ideal pitch has a structure but also a smooth flow of the story throughout the entire presentation.

Usually, you will start with a problem and how massive it is (to show the potential market size).

Then talk about your solution and why now is the right time. And lastly, you need to mention why you’ve got the best team to build this solution and how much funding you need to make it work.

Sometimes you will need to add extra slides or tweak the structure if demanded.

If you do so, you need to RE-WRITE your pitch to make sure that the storytelling flow remains.

4. Preparation will give you confidence

Preparation is crucial for a successful pitch.

They say Steve Jobs would take a week to prepare his public presentation. He practiced relentlessly, every pause was measured.

Here you can read more about how Steve Jobs would prepare.

All the greatest public speakers practice before the event.

Know your story and practice speaking in front of and without a mirror. If you have a chance, go and practice at the venue where the event is going to take place.

It’s cringe. I know.

It works though.

All of this preparation will help you in case something goes wrong on stage — if you feel like a fish in the ocean with your story, you will pick it up and keep going.

5. Pro tip — evoke emotions and get the listeners involved

In order for this tip to work you need to make sure that you’ve practiced enough and are more or less confident on stage.

Our goal when pitching often is to stand out and create interest around the startup. You can do that by creating an emotional connection between you and your listeners.

There are two main ways to do that:

• Ask them a question.

  This is the most commonly used one and it works. When you have to listen to 30 pitches in a row it can be hard to stay focused. Being asked a simple question or to raise a hand works like magic and switches on your audience. Now they are curious to see what’s coming next.

  
  

• Make a joke.

  Making a joke is a very dangerous and slippery slope. However, if you can make a masterful joke on stage you can win their hearts in a second. Make sure you don’t joke about your projections or your solution. You can make a joke about yourself, but make sure to not put yourself down. Or you can joke while talking about an imaginary situation.

Conclusion

You are one of 10s if not 100s of pitches your audience will hear on a weekly basis. Keep that in mind when you prepare your pitch.

Build a strong story, practice a lot and try to build a trustful and emotional connection with your listeners.

Remember, they are giving something unique, which is their time. Use this time wisely and tell them about something interesting and valuable (and if you can be entertaining, that’s a bonus).