We worked with YC on a guide to pitching early stage investors: https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/pitching … I've got some thoughts:
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As a sometimes engineer who couldn't code his way out of a paper bag when I graduated, I am worried if I read a technically ambitious pitch which doesn't come attached to overwhelming evidence that you can ship software.
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I've done reviews for Stripe Atlas companies' YC applications before. After 25 of them, I can scarcely see straight. Actual YC reviewers do many, many more. Make an effort to frontload the awesome bits of your story and to be memorable.
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There is an art to telling good stories. If you're not good at it, you can steal one of the oldest narrative structures we have: A thing is broken. Our hero chances upon it. They try to do the thing that everyone else tried. It doesn't work. But they persevered. Suddenly...
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(Yeah, there are plenty of other ways to tell stories too, but classics are classics for a reason.)
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A thing which took me more than ten years to appreciate: founder/product/market fit is a *lot* better than any two of those.
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"Why is this market attractive?" is often pretty obvious. "Why is this market what you're devoting 10 years of your life/career to?" is less so. A compelling answer to that materially derisks "Are they going to quit in 4 months when it feels like they're still so far away?"
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Many founders were good students in school. Somewhat surprisingly given that, most pitches lack concrete detail or evidence for claims. Equally surprisingly: the number of founders who think the investor wants a Wikipedia article. (They do, but: from the future.)
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What's the big problem in the industry? Where is the industry almost inevitably going? Why aren't we there yet? What stumbling blocks are going to slow progress? How do you plan to overcome them and be the firm written about in the Wikipedia article?
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End of conversation
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