The #1 Pitch Slide Founders Get Wrong…

70 cents out of every dollar invested goes toward marketing - and founders who waste deserve to lose.

Three years ago, I watched a startup founder pitch a killer product—with zero clue who would actually buy it.

The tech? Genius.

The deck? Polished.

The customer slide? A total dumpster fire.

He lost the room in under 60 seconds.

Unfortunately, most founders don’t raise because:

As a founder, your job is to show that you live inside your customer’s head daily.

When talking about customers in the pitch, most founders toss in some demographics, maybe a TAM/SAM/SOM chart, and call it a day.

But investors don’t care about “people aged 25–45 who like productivity apps,” stupid.

They want to know who you’re actually selling to right now—and whether you know that yourself.

They’re too broad. “Tech-savvy millennials” is not a customer segment.

You can’t…

• rely on assumptions instead of conversations.
• confuse “potential” customers with “paying” customers.
• try to look big instead of being clear.
• skip the pressure-test on your target market under a real constraint.

Most founders couldn’t tell you who their best customer is without stuttering.

But investors who smell a lack of customer focus will torpedo you for it.

Let’s walk through the three key things your investor-ready customer slide must answer:

Step 1: Who’s Your “$1M or Bust” Customer?

When working with founders who want to raise, I tell them something a hardass investor once told me:

I give you $1 million, but you can only spend it marketing to one customer segment. If you’re successful, I’ll give you another $10 million. But if you fail, I take your company. Who do you go after?

If your answer is vague, you’ve already lost.

This “$1M or bust” exercise slices through the fluff and forces clarity. You’ll uncover:

• Your most profitable, most responsive segment
• Who already buys, not who you hope might buy
• Who will unlock real traction when capital is deployed

Pro tip: Your Facebook ad targeting criteria is often more insightful than your pitch deck slide.

If you’ve been spending money on Meta ads, revisit your targeting & who’s responding, that’ll give you a leg up.

Step 2: How Deep Is Your Pipeline?

Got some big logos sniffing around? Don’t just name-drop. Show me the pipeline.

Investors want to see:

• What the deal is
• Why it matters strategically (not just revenue)
• What stage it’s in (intro, pilot, close?)
• Current size of the opportunity
• How big it could be at full rollout

Here’s what most founders do:

“We’re talking to Shopify and Uber.”

Here’s what they should do:

“Shopify: currently in pilot, if rolled out across their ecosystem, it’s a $1.2M ACV opportunity that could scale up to $20M at full scale. In talks with Director of Ops. Goal: convert Q3.”

That’s the difference between getting follow-up questions… and getting ghosted.

NB: B2C version of this = waitlist of paying customers whose credit card #s we have

Step 3: Who’s Your Lowest-Hanging Fruit?

Your pipeline doesn’t have to be huge - but you better be crystal clear about who your easiest wins are.

Here’s what that looks like:

• “Our fastest-converting customers are small HR tech companies with 5–20 employees and no internal data ops.”
• “We sell best when the founder is still involved in ops and hates spreadsheets.”
• “Our best channel? Cold LinkedIn DMs to Head of Product in Series A SaaS.”

Not sure who those low-hanging fruit are?

Get on the phone.

Talk to your best customers.

Not your friends.

Not your beta testers.

The ones who paid you full price and came back for more.

Ask them:

• Why did you buy?
• What problem were you trying to solve?
• Why us, not someone else?
• What almost stopped you?

These answers will write your customer slide for you.

B2C ecom: Speak with repeat purchasers (especially BIG repeat purchasers!) Don’t forget to send them free stuff as a thank you gesture - it goes a long way. Just no corporate swag.

Investors don’t fund startups.

They fund distribution to a clearly defined customer who already wants what you’re selling.

Don’t waste your time pretending you’re selling to everyone.

Pick a segment. Back it with real data.

And own it like your runway depends on it—because it does.