Pitch Fails and How to Bounce Back, According to Reddit

As a founder, failure is inevitable. But the silver lining is that it means everyone experiences it. While learning from past mistakes is crucial to success, it doesn’t mean it’s an enjoyable experience.

When it comes to relatable and humorous stories, Reddit will never let you down. (Also, public service announcements, avoid alcohol and drugs before you pitch.)

Here are some of the most impactful pitch fails on Reddit and the valuable lessons learned from them.

May I please have an F in the chat? I just gave the worst pitch of my life.

[Reddit Post]

crookedcusp:

This exact thing happened to me last week. I had an investor call with 40 participants. I did exactly what you did: panicked and rushed a 15-minute pitch into about 8 minutes, glossing over important points. It became a vicious cycle—the worse it got, the more I wanted to finish, and the more I rushed. I was kicking myself for the next day or two.

As others have said, the audience likely didn’t notice all the things you did, and I’m sure it was better than you felt it was afterwards. There’s nothing to do but get back up and go again—that’s just the nature of it. 🙂

stingraycharles:

I once had a blackout during a pitch. I couldn’t utter a word. As seconds went by, which felt like minutes, it became harder and harder.

I apologized, said I would go to the restroom for one minute, came back, and did the pitch anyway. Everyone was very understanding, as everyone has been on the other side of the table.

Didn’t get the deal, though, lol.

But having such an experience did make me much stronger and much more disciplined when it came to preparing presentations.

Nowadays, 15 years later, my brain is almost on autopilot for most presentations. But for the important ones, I still prepare a lot — a 15-minute pitch could mean I would spend half a day each day for the entire week preparing, recording myself, asking for feedback from peers, re-recording, etc.

I understand that this is also what the “great speakers” tend to do, who come off as naturals (Steve Jobs, Malcolm Gladwell, etc.).

Bottom line: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Let this experience make you stronger.

pebbles354:

It happens. The first time we pitched, I completely fumbled it. I was running a real estate company that made rentals easier, and I ended up going on a rant about how people could garden and go outside before running out of time. It was a complete disaster.

We (obviously) didn’t get any money, but we did raise over $1M a few months later in a very competitive round. Now, it’s just a funny story—though my (former) cofounder still teases me about it from time to time. 😛

Focus on building a great company, and quickly forget about the screw-ups. If you build something users want, the money will come.

KishBuildsTech:

Last month, I had this meeting. I was so pumped for this meeting. When the investor joined the GMeet, I went blank. My pitch had all the super non-important things about my startup. I included all the dumb details that weren’t needed. I was talking for a straight 5 minutes. The investor’s response was, “OK, cool, we’ll get back to you later.” At this moment, I knew that I f*cked up!

After this, I learned that I should start with the lowest-priority investors and then go to the top-priority investors. So you’ll automatically polish your pitch every time. And eventually, you’ll do well when you meet the top-priority investor. I learned this from another founder.

I just failed my first pitch to an angel investor. How do I make financial projections for a pre-revenue startup?

[Reddit Post]

JamesFarlington, 9y ago

Here’s the thing — when you’re pitching to investors, you have to show them how THEY will make money. It’s important to remember an investor isn’t investing in your business for the sake of it, but for their return.

It does depend on the space, but having a path to monetisation at least outlined/thought about shows you have an understanding of this, even if it’s not immediately focused.

If you’re a user-based product geared toward building audiences, start with your overall market size, number of users daily over time, then potential revenue you could extract based on current market conditions. That’s for very broad startup concepts, e.g., FB, SnapChats.

More niche should focus on:

• Market size (how big is the need/use of the product, total audience; always be conservative here, no one believes billion-people startups even if it’s a killer idea).
• Underlying costs to service a customer (e.g., support staff, server costs, etc.).
• Expected revenue per customer (e.g., what price they will pay at the start, ongoing, price packages).
• Expected cost per acquisition (e.g., total cost to acquire).
• High-level overview of the acquisition funnel (e.g., overview of the process to acquire a customer — digital marketing, face-to-face sales).
• You then extrapolate that into a break-even point and figure it out from there.

**MY SOURCE: I’m a tech investor myself and have funded around 8 startups.

About the Author: Tess Danielson is a journalist and writer focusing on the intersection of technology and society.