Anatomy of a pitch
A pitch is not a presentation. A presentation is a slide deck with bullet points. A pitch is a proof under pressure— you have 90 seconds to convince three people who are paid to be skeptical that what you're building deserves their money.
Strip away the slides, the demo videos, the music swells. Every pitch that lands has the same four pieces. Miss any one and the panel starts looking at their phones.
▸ The four anchors
One sentence that makes the panel look up. We'll spend a whole page on this — it's the most important sentence you'll write.
Whose pain are you solving, and why is it expensive enough to pay for? Specific. With a real person you can name.
What's the small, sharp thing you do that nobody else can do as well right now? Not your vision — your wedge.
How much money. What you'll spend it on. What it gets you (a milestone, not a slogan).
Order matters more than founders think. Get them out of sequence and the panel can't follow you. Ask first, problem second, hook nowhere — that's a Series-A founder having a bad Tuesday.
Drag these into the order the panel expects to hear them — the order that earns you the next question instead of a polite 'thanks for coming in.'
- ⋮⋮We're raising ₹6Cr at 18% to add 200 cities by Q4.the ask
- ⋮⋮A kirana shop owner loses 11 hours and ₹8K a month to procurement.the problem
- ⋮⋮43% of food leaving a tier-2 wholesaler is rotten before it hits the shelf.the hook
- ⋮⋮We're the cheapest way for a kirana to order weekly essentials in cash.the wedge
Founder–market fit weaves through all four. Why youget to say these things and have anyone listen. We'll cover that two pages from now.
A founder opens a Cram pitch with: 'We're building the future of urban mobility — a platform-agnostic ecosystem.' What's the panel thinking?