pitches Archives - Startup Economist

Founders, Stop Trying to Be Perfect

Monday, 23 February 2026 by Paul O'Brien

Perfection is the fastest way to look inexperienced. Not because ambition is bad and not because polish doesn’t matter but because the very definition of a startup makes perfection impossible. A startup is not a smaller version of a big company, it is a temporary organization searching for a scalable, repeatable business model. That language

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

Thursday, 22 January 2026 by Paul O'Brien

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

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A Startup Pitch is NOT a Sales Pitch!

Monday, 24 October 2022 by Paul O'Brien

More than half the pitches I heard this past week went like this, and I want to share this to stress how significantly you should understand how this is NOT a good pitch if you need investors: 1. This is our solution2. This is how it works and all our great features3. We’ve sold it

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