The Startup Pitch Mistakes That Tell Us You’ll Fail Before You Start

A startup pitch is not a sales pitch; no one in the room is buying, we are not your customer and we’re not even deciding whether your idea “will work.” What we’re doing is much simpler and harsher: we’re deciding whether what you’re doing creates enough perceived value to justify our time, reputation, and risk tolerance.

A startup pitch is not “for investors,” so for pitches sake, stop thinking that! It’s not for customers either! It’s for everyone.

• It’s what potential partners hear when deciding whether to align with you
• It’s what future employees and co-founders hear when deciding whether you’re worth betting their careers on
• It’s what mentors hear when deciding whether to invest their limited attention
• It is for investors and customers too, but you’re failing for reasons few explain or even understand

It’s for people like me when you’re asking for introductions. What I’d like to do here is explain why, out of the dozens of pitches I hear every day, you don’t get those introductions. Every time you pitch, the name, network, and credibility of everyone in the audience, is on the line when they help you.

While most are trying to advice you how to make your pitch better, let me explain how it sucks so you stop doing these things.

Seriously. Out of a hundred pitches I receive (emails, DMs, decks, live presentations) maybe two trigger the thought: okay, I’d risk my reputation by introducing this one. Not because they were polished and not because they had traction but because what they said and how they said it signaled that the opportunity exceeded the risk – simple startup pitch mistakes.

While advisors preach MVP testing, validation, customer discovery, and relentless execution, founders are drowning in advice about which framework to follow and which newsletter to read. Meanwhile, the real failure mode is painfully basic: what you say (and write) about what you’re doing fails; before the product fails, before the market rejects you, and before capital even listens.

The first mistake is thinking you’re pitching to investors or customers, you’re not, you’re pitching to everyone. At least some startup development organizations understand this; at Founder Institute, founders pitch every week, not to raise money, but to fix what’s wrong. That repetition isn’t about learning how to “sell investors better,” it’s about fixing how you think, speak, and write. And in such environments, we can spot future failure instantly in cohorts where founders say, “I don’t understand why we’re pitching every week;” a sentence that alone reveals misaligned priorities. Weekly pitching forces clarity about what matters, what’s being validated, and whether the work is actually worth anyone else’s time. Pitch work isn’t presentation polish; it’s cognitive repair.

What most advisors lack (and won’t tell is you) is that most of them have little to no training in communication. That isn’t a negative criticism of advisors it’s just a fact of people in general, but it’s a skill insufficiently understood none-the-less. Communication errors aren’t cosmetic, they’re structural. Founders make predictable rhetorical and logical mistakes that instantly signal poor judgment, weak thinking, or unmanaged risk. If you’re in a startup or a startup development organization, you should be actively seeking people with backgrounds in public speaking, writing, debate, or rhetoric – not social media influencers nor “pitch coaches” who optimize slides, but communicators who know how to identify and correct these errors.

Why Startup Pitches Fail: The Mistakes We Spot Immediately

Catch-22 Statements

A Catch-22 is a self-defeating argument where the condition required to succeed is impossible to meet because of the rules you’ve imposed. Joseph Heller popularized the term and you might be familiar with the book (or Hulu series).

In startups, this is evident in the notion that “We can’t get customers until we raise money, but we can’t raise money until we get customers.” What the listener hears is not empathy; it’s paralysis. You’re announcing that progress is impossible without external rescue.

The fix is reframing agency. Replace impossibility with what’s known as constraint navigation. “We’ve identified a constrained point of entry that allows us to validate demand without capital,” and do it. People won’t help you if you can’t work your way out of two conflicting statements that create a stalemate; startups are about breaking stalemates.

Selling Instead of Pitching

I touched on this as I waxed on too poetically before getting to this list, so let me be clear why selling kills your pitch: selling is persuasive while pitching is explanatory. When founders conflate the two, they oversell before they’ve established credibility.

One of my Pitch Deck peeves is that the standard template, and too many advisors, tell you to introduce the team near the end of the presentation. See the flaw in that? “Oversell before they’ve established credibility,” means I have no reason to believe you, invest time in listening, or care, because I have no idea if you and your team are even capable and credible. This isn’t directly selling instead of pitching, but it’s related; you are not persuading me of anything! I am paying attention to uncover the opportunity and value in helping you in some way – that’s a pitch – and you have to explain it.

You see sales when a pitch is packed with hype language such as how great this article is: “revolutionary,” “game-changing,” “guaranteed ROI,” before anyone understands the problem. Over-selling signals insecurity and often suggests the founder doesn’t understand the audience’s role.

The fix is simple and uncomfortable: stop convincing, start clarifying. A good pitch teaches. If someone understands the value and risk clearly, persuasion takes care of itself.

Ad Hominem Attacks

An ad hominem shifts focus from the argument to the person. In startups, it often appears as dismissing competitors or critics as “stupid,” “legacy,” or “out of touch.”

Kiss of death? Actually, saying you don’t really have any competitors. Life-threatening collision? Comparing yourself to competitors in a way that frames you as simply better (see the previous mistake to learn more)

When founders attack people instead of addressing alternatives, it signals fragility. Worse, it implies you don’t understand why others have chosen different approaches.

Now imagine, or even perhaps consider if you have done this; I’ve been in pitches where the founders will even criticize the audience for not understanding, not being their target, or not caring. What are you doing!?

The fix is respect through analysis which means explaining why existing approaches fail structurally or economically without attacking the actors behind them. Certainly, never criticize your audience – you don’t know their experience or skills and more often than not, someone willing to speak up with criticism is because they know better. Serious audiences respect rigor, not contempt.

Red Herrings

A red herring distracts from the core issue by introducing irrelevant information. In pitches, this often shows up as impressive but unrelated metrics (social followers, press mentions, vague partnerships) that don’t address the fundamental question of value creation. For example, traction doesn’t mean you have 10 customers, it’s evident in a recurring pattern and the delta’s (changes) that show an improving venture.

The fix is ruthless relevance. Every claim should directly reduce uncertainty about value, feasibility, or risk. If it doesn’t, cut it.

Another pet peeve that I have is one that frustrates most Product or Engineer oriented founders – no, I don’t want to see a demo of your solution, if it doesn’t do what you claim, that’s evident in what you are telling me because a functional solution alone is not a valuable company. The red herring is the distraction from your growth metrics or competitive advantage, “here, let me show you the demo.”

Ignorance of Competition

Nothing kills credibility faster than “we have no competitors.” That statement doesn’t signal uniqueness; it signals ignorance.

Competition isn’t just companies, it’s substitutes, behaviors, inertia, and status quo. Pretending otherwise tells us you haven’t done the work.

The fix is intellectual honesty. Map the alternatives (not things doing what you’re doing! Alternatives!) clearly and explain why your approach changes the trade-offs; differentiation is comparative, not declarative.

Straw Man Arguments

A straw man misrepresents an opposing position to make it easier to knock down. This probably the mistake most in need of examples. Consider it making a caricature of existing solutions instead of engaging with their real strengths.

Let me give you a few here, because this one shows up all the time while also closely relating to other mistakes:

• “Existing solutions are spreadsheets and email, which are obviously broken.” That’s a straw man. No serious buyer is choosing spreadsheets because they think spreadsheets are great software. They’re choosing them because they’re flexible, cheap, familiar, and good enough. By pretending incumbents are stupid tools used by clueless people, the founder avoids explaining why those real advantages are outweighed. The fix would be acknowledging why spreadsheets persist and explaining precisely which costs or risks finally exceed their benefits.
• “Legacy vendors are slow, bloated, and don’t care about customers.” That’s not an argument; it’s a cartoon villain. Large vendors survive because they handle compliance, scale, procurement, and political risk better than startups. When founders reduce them to lazy monopolists, they’re dodging the harder question of how they’ll replace institutional trust. A serious pitch explains where incumbents are constrained structurally, not morally.
• “Everyone else is still using outdated technology, but we’re using AI.” That implies competitors are ignorant or incompetent. In reality, most companies are very aware of new technology and have chosen not to adopt it because of cost, risk, data readiness, or marginal benefit. The straw man is pretending ignorance when the real issue is trade-offs. Fixing it means articulating why the timing, economics, or constraints have changed now.
• One from today, a founder pitched, “Most startups in accelerators are spending $100-$300/mo just on cold outreach tools (Lavender, Lemlist, etc.), which is insane for a pre-seed or seed-stage team.” Um… no, they’re absolutely not. Notice the criticism of Lavender and Lemlist, which is also ignorance of competitors and ad hominem attack, even wrapped a bit in selling rather than pitching because they’re trying to persuade the audience that they’re better.

You ever hear (or God forbid, say), “We’re not raising capital because investors just don’t get it”? Okay, you’re done.

The fix is always the same and always uncomfortable: present the strongest version of the alternative and then explain why your approach still wins despite that strength. When a founder does that well, it’s immediately obvious; when they don’t, we know (instantly) they’re going to fail.

False Dilemma (False Dichotomy)

False dilemmas frame the world as having only two options: “either you do X or you fail.” Startups that rely on this sound naive because reality is multi-dimensional.

The fix is nuance by acknowledging multiple paths and explaining why yours is advantageous under specific conditions. Sophisticated audiences think in spectra, not binaries.

Seeing a pattern yet? You should… this is frequently related to straw man arguments.

Want some common pitch advice that more frequently screws you up? This is also usually evident in that advice that you start your pitch with a question. If the mind of your audience might think, “no, I don’t have that problem,” or “no, actually, I don’t agree,” then you’ve failed at the start; you set up this binary decision that isn’t realistic and lost your audience because of it.

Slippery Slope Claims

Slippery slope arguments assume that one action will inevitably lead to extreme outcomes. “If we don’t do this now, the market will be gone forever.” This is a fear-based tactic, not analysis.

Not to be judgmental but hey, that’s why we’re here; almost all social impact, energy, or climate-oriented founders do this because their passion and bias supersede judgement.

I got it, the world is going to end if we don’t invest in your lawn water reduction app. I’m good, thanks.

Show mechanisms, not inevitabilities. If a risk exists, articulate its probability and impact instead of dramatizing it.

Appeal to Authority

Name-dropping logos, advisors, or “top-tier interest” without substance is an appeal to authority. Logic should get you to appreciate the fallacy particularly when authority is irrelevant or unverifiable.

Explain why someone’s involvement matters operationally or strategically; otherwise, it’s noise.

I have this happen quite a bit so here’s a good example: I’m frequently asked to be an advisor to a startup. Most completely irrelevant to my work or experience… “okay… why me?” The founder is trying to establish their credibility with authority. I’m going to say no, because it makes you look bad.

Circular Reasoning (Begging the Question)

Circular reasoning occurs when the conclusion is assumed in the premise. “We’re the best because no one else does this as well as we do.” That tells us nothing.

Back to pattern matching from this list: ignorance of competitors, false dilemma, selling, and a bit of ad hominem.

Use external validation not internal logic – Show how inputs lead to outcomes without restating the claim. When pressed why, if your answer is “Because customers keep choosing us,” that’s internal logic. Instead, we need causality such as, “Shortening onboarding from six weeks to nine days cut implementation costs by 38%, which is why procurement approved us despite a higher price.”

Notice, explaining not persuading (not selling).

Hasty Generalization

Founders often extrapolate broad conclusions from tiny samples: “Our first three customers loved it, so the market is huge.”

Most evident is in your TAM/SAM/SOM slide where I’ve pointed out before that saying your Total Addressable Market is billions is rather irrelevant (globally, everything is) and your SOM (obtainable market) needs to be what you can get right now (meaning it’s probably really small). Don’t lead us to generalizations because we neither care nor are they believable.

The fix is proportionality in that you match the strength of your claim to the size and representativeness of your evidence. Simply be clear what’s real and possible.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

Let’s end with some Latin none of us will ever remember! You’ll know what this is when I say it because in English, it’s a frequent concern. This fallacy assumes that because one event followed another, it was caused by it. “We launched feature X and revenue went up, so feature X caused growth.”

Correlation is not causation.

Here’s one, that can help us all; not really a startup mistake but an example I write about frequently: Entrepreneurship isn’t just owning a business; the high correlation between business ownership and entrepreneurial behavior has led people to mistakenly treat them as the same thing. Likewise, the starting of a business (sequence) doesn’t make someone an entrepreneur. Similarly, a startup might be a small business, but a new small business isn’t a startup; the correlation of the two being small and new does not cause them to be the same.

Serious leaders do not confuse sequence or similarity with cause.

Startup Pitch Mistakes Kill You from the Start

Founders cannot afford these mistakes. Call it pitching, explaining, writing, or thinking—labels don’t matter. When you commit these errors in how you talk about what you’re doing, you lose before you begin. Not because the idea is bad, but because you’ve signaled that the risk outweighs the value.

If you’re wondering why doors aren’t opening, why introductions don’t happen, or why advisors disengage, look at your language. The market listens long before it buys.