By Ana Maria Andronic
I had the privilege of being part of the early days of pitching in Romania’s tech industry, and the people who know me know I don’t like to brag.
A bit of context: in 2010, I co-founded the first pitching event in Romanian tech — Venture Connect — alongside some of the names who effectively shaped the Romanian IT industry at the time. They were also the people I, in turn, pitched the project to, and I’m still grateful to them today for believing in an idea that was completely new to the local market back then. It was an industry just being born, without the information sources we have today, and pitches were full of details that did very little to actually help an investor make an investment decision.
From then until now, I’ve been watching pitches every week, either directly or through the @Tech Angels, @Bravva Angels, or @Seedblink communities. I contribute to all of them whenever I get the chance, and I want to thank them for their constant support of the Romanian tech entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Things have come a long way since then. Founders today have access to resources, mentors, templates — Seedblink even offers a really useful tool that evaluates pitch quality (compared to 2010, it feels almost unreal that something like this exists), and with today’s AI, you can put together a pitch structure in five minutes.
And yet, I keep noticing that, even when the slides technically tick all the boxes, the message doesn’t quite land with investors the way it should. Often, the essential information an investor needs to hear isn’t communicated clearly, and the pitch doesn’t convince.
I think the main reason is this: founders follow a “by-the-book” structure and forget to ask themselves who’s actually sitting in the audience, and what investors really want to walk away with after those five minutes.
So I’ve tried to put down here, in the kind of language I wish I heard more often in pitches, a few things I hope will help.
Investors are, most of the time, non-technical people. They want to understand, simply and clearly, in everyday words (I really want to insist on “everyday words”), not technical jargon — “explain it like I’m six years old”:
- what problem the product solves (why anyone would buy it)
- why it’s better than what’s already out there (who the competition is)
- how many people could actually buy it (the size of the market)
- who the people are who will be working full-time on this company for the next (minimum) four years (the team)
All of this fits, literally, in five minutes. Investors aren’t buying the product. They don’t need endless technical detail. They don’t need convincing to adopt a new technology.
What they need is to easily understand what the product does (the trick is to explain the concept by comparing it to something they can already relate to mentally), to feel that the founding team has the know-how, or knows who to bring on board, that they understand their competitive edge, that the market is big enough, that they know how to sell, and that they’re truly committed to seeing this through for a number of years to come.
The description above is intentionally simplified. The rest, the details, the questions, the follow-ups, come naturally, and they’re absolutely necessary and interesting. But if you don’t clear that minimum bar of conviction in the first few minutes, the chances of a second conversation drop significantly.
A thought on the use of language, too. I see a lot of buzzwords in pitches — TAM, SAM, the Ask, and so on. They’re useful terms, no question. But it’s worth remembering what they were created for: to simplify the verbal communication of certain concepts, not to replace it. “Reciting” them, without actually demonstrating the understanding behind them, doesn’t convince, on the contrary, it can come across as inauthentic.
I’m a strong believer in more human language in these conversations. Who we are, what we noticed that is not working in the world, what we’re building to change that, who it’s for, why us, and why now. These are the same questions answered by the slides on TAM, competitive landscape, and team — just framed in a way that leaves room for authenticity, not just for reciting “the right words.”
And authenticity, in my experience, is what makes the difference between a correct pitch and a memorable one.
Ana Maria Andronic is President of TechAngels and Managing Partner at Andronic and Partners. She was elected as a member of the association’s Board last year and has been active in the Romanian startup ecosystem for more than 15 years. She co-founded Venture Connect, Romania’s first initiative dedicated to facilitating investments in tech startups, and is known as an active angel investor. Her profile combines investment experience, intellectual property expertise, and hands-on involvement in transactions and exit processes in the tech startup space.