Investors fund narratives they can retell. These talks cover how to structure a company story, a pitch arc, and a vision investors can carry into their partner meeting.
1h 6m
Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins recounts pitching for three years and being rejected by more than 100 investors before closing Canva's first round, including how she reworked the pitch around each objection. She details the kitesurfing-with-investors period in Silicon Valley and how rejection shaped the company's strategy.
1h 9m
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky talks with Jason Calacanis about the company's early days: living off credit cards, the cereal-box hustle, and the wave of investor rejections at a $1.5M valuation before YC and Sequoia came in. Strong sections on what rejection taught him about conviction.
58 min
Hustle Fund GP Elizabeth Yin takes live pitches from real founders and gives unfiltered feedback in real time, explaining her actual investment thought process as she reacts to each pitch.
47 min
Michael Seibel's SaaStr session on pitching a seed-stage startup: the exact structure of a two-minute pitch, the most common ways founders confuse investors, and live Q&A with founders in the room.
1 min
Bill Gurley on why founders and investors over-index on TAM slides, with examples of huge companies whose initial TAM looked tiny.
6 min
Seibel contrasts pitching investors with pitching customers: investors buy the upside story and the market, customers buy the solution — and mixing the two kills both.
27 min
YC's Kevin Hale on pitch construction: clarity, the 'legible, obvious, conductive' framework, and live rewrites of muddled startup one-liners.
36 min
At TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, VCs give live unrehearsed feedback on audience members' actual pitch decks, disagreeing with each other about what works.
25 min
Hustle Fund reviews a real startup's deck slide by slide, narrating the investor's inner monologue and cataloging the seven mistakes they see most at pre-seed and seed.
4 min
NFX's James Currier maps the four types of pitch decks and the six things a VC must know by the end of any of them.
15 min
Web Summit talk on winning funds and influencing investors: pitch psychology and meeting dynamics from the investor's chair.
29 min
Stella & Dot founder Jessica Herrin and Jenny Lefcourt — co-founders together in the 90s — compare notes across founder and investor seats on what raising money really takes.