Insight
Crabtree: Numbers are meaningless without narrative framing
“Numbers on their own are meaningless. I can make numbers say good or bad, no matter what.”
Insight
Crabtree: A great startup pitch is an exercise in world-building
“A great startup pitch is made when an investor can see the future that that person is talking about. The reality is a pitch really is a story, but deeper than that, beyond just a story, it's actually an exercise in world building.”
Insight
Crabtree: Pitch future vision before presenting current traction metrics
“The reason why I say to do it this way is future and then go back to its working is if an investor already knows what the end goal should look like. And then you come and say, here's all the data points that show us that we're on the right path. They're going …”
Insight
Crabtree: Personal connection makes investors search for reasons to say yes
“When we like somebody, when we believe in them, when we connect to them, we look for green flags. We look for reasons to say yes. That's just human nature.”
Insight
Crabtree: Founders must pitch with approachable expertise rather than weakness or aggression
“And so what I've actually come up with is this idea of what I call approachable expertise. And it's a tone that you want to deliver where it's like, Hey, I know what I'm talking about, but Alex, like if you have pushback, let's have the conversation. Let's, le…”
Insight
Crabtree: Pitch pushback shows investors how founders will lead as CEOs
“And investors also, in my experience, want founders who are willing to stand up for themselves and to push back because it's a microcosm of their experience as a CEO long-term.”
Insight
Crabtree: Vision pitch stories should be three minutes and 600 words
“And I think a story when you're telling the vision story, it should be about three minutes long. Three minutes for anyone out there is about 600 words. It's a little bit less if you're speaking slower, but many founders tend to speak fast. So anywhere between …”
Insight
Crabtree: Pitching 'what if I'm right' shifts investors to upside thinking
“And if you get an investor thinking through the lens of what if I'm right, that's how you get them thinking about, oh, this is the fund returner. This is the outlier inside of the fund, because now they're just thinking about the biggest upside case instead of…”
Insight
Crabtree: The best impromptu speakers are never actually speaking impromptu
“The best impromptu speakers are never speaking impromptu.”
Insight
Crabtree: Match pitch deck structure to the investor's problem familiarity
“So if you're really tackling something that's, you know, a little bit more challenging to describe the problem where you really need them to feel that pain because maybe the investor doesn't understand it right out of the gate, dig into the problem and then go…”
