<story><title>Pitching your early stage startup</title><url>https://stripe.com/en-gb-be/atlas/guides/pitching</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sokoloff</author><text>Another great piece from Patrick, full of specific advice and grounded in several places with “and here’s the one non-obvious additional tidbit that will drive the point home for you most helpfully”.&lt;p&gt;Only minor addition I’d make is in the section on Fermi estimation of market size is to end that with a warning something like “but resist the temptation to say ‘and even if we only get 1% of that &lt;i&gt;huge&lt;/i&gt; market, we’ll still be a success!’” You might be permanently viable and profitable (success for you perhaps), but getting 1% is harder than you think and is not a success case for a VC. But it’s super-tempting and common thought pattern. What you’re pitching and thinking of as an exciting modest success is another failure that the VC has to wind down and exit from.&lt;p&gt;You might be OK with that outcome, but portray that you’re single-mindedly going after 70+% of that market. If the investor wants to calculate what 1% of it is on their own, they can in their head; you don’t need to connect those dots for them and put the fallback&amp;#x2F;safety case in their mind. (It’s not entirely omitted, but I’d make it explicit as I’ve gone down this road myself.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Pitching your early stage startup</title><url>https://stripe.com/en-gb-be/atlas/guides/pitching</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ignoramous</author><text>This content makes for a compelling aside to &lt;i&gt;Pitching Hacks&lt;/i&gt; book by Angel List: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20120227074613&amp;#x2F;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;venturehacks.wpengine.com&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2009&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;Pitching-Hacks.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;web.archive.org&amp;#x2F;web&amp;#x2F;20120227074613&amp;#x2F;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ventureha...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;startupclass.samaltman.com&amp;#x2F;lists&amp;#x2F;readings&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;startupclass.samaltman.com&amp;#x2F;lists&amp;#x2F;readings&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>