a single source, nothing corroborates it

Rehearse the three minute pitch like a product

A demo day slot is a two minute live pitch plus a one minute recorded video, and it took one founder days of drafting and many nights of rehearsal to get it under control. He only had a coherent version once his co-founder took over the slides and the narrative and left him a few lines of story to write, so do not draft it alone. Run a teleprompter, test the whole setup repeatedly, and put real work into the deck and into captioning the video, because that polish is what the audience responded to when he won the popular vote without winning the pitch.

The method

1. 01

   Build the pitch deck properly and bake captions into the showcase video. Kahl's audience response was to the polish of the deck and the video being easy to follow.

2. 02

   Do not write a short pitch alone. Kahl needed days to get three minutes under control and only got a coherent pitch once his co founder took over the slide design and narrative and left him a few lines of story to write.

3. 03

   Run a teleprompter and test the whole setup multiple times before a live pitch.

What it returned

• Won the People's Choice Award at the Paddle demo day without winning the pitch itself, which went to Vanna.ai

• Two minute live pitch plus a one minute pre recorded video, days of drafting and many days and nights of rehearsal

Sources

• Tipping Over – The Bootstrapped FounderArvid Kahl · thebootstrappedfounder.com · 2024-07-12