3 pitches every founder needs

One of the first things you learn as a founder is that building a great product isn’t enough. You have to be able to explain why it’s great, to three very different groups of people: customers, investors, and employees. Each group has its own incentives, priorities, and motivations. They care about different aspects of your product and company, and that means you can’t just give the same pitch to all of them.

You need three pitches to start: one for customers, one for investors, and one for employees. Think of them like three lenses focused on the same object, each revealing different things. Get these right, and you have the foundation of a company. Get them wrong, and no matter how good your product is, you’ll struggle to get off the ground.

For customers

Customers don’t care about your grand vision or how complex your product is under the hood. They care about how it will make their life better, how it will help them be more productive, save money, or grow their business. Your job is to make that clear.

The first customer pitch is about results. You need to answer a simple question: How does this make their life easier? Will it cut down the time they spend doing annoying tasks? Will it reduce costs? Will it boost their revenue? If you can’t give them a clear reason why their life will improve, you’re dead in the water.

This pitch is where many founders get stuck. They fall in love with the features of their product and forget that customers buy outcomes, not tools. Imagine you’re selling an accounting automation tool. Saying “We use AI to automate financial workflows” is fine, but “We’ll save you 10 hours a week on bookkeeping” is better. The customer pitch isn’t about what your product does, it’s about what it does for them.

For investors

If the customer pitch is about immediate results, the investor pitch is about the future. Investors don’t just care about what you’re building today; they care about where this could go. They’re not buying the product, they’re buying the vision of a company that could become big, fast.

Here, you need to shift gears. Investors want to know what makes your solution unique, but more importantly, they want to know how you’ll scale it. How do you plan to grow your customer base? What’s the market size? How will you create a competitive moat? And, of course, how will this become valuable enough to make them money?

This pitch is where you tell the story of what you’re building and how you’ll grow it into something much bigger than it is today. It’s not enough to say, “We’re going to increase revenue by 20% each year.” They want to hear: How does this become a billion-dollar company? The more vivid and compelling your story, the more likely investors are to get excited. Your job here is to make them believe that what you’re building is both possible and inevitable.

For employees

Employees aren’t just looking for a paycheck. The best ones want meaning and impact. Your pitch to them has to answer a simple but profound question: Why should they join your company?

This pitch is about more than just benefits or job titles. It’s about culture, purpose, and impact. You have to sell them on the why behind your company. What kind of culture are you building? What values will guide your team? But most importantly: What kind of impact will their work have? Everyone wants to feel like they’re part of something meaningful, especially in a startup where uncertainty is high.

Good employees want to know that what they’re building matters, that their work will make a difference for customers, for the company, and maybe even for the world. This is where many founders get it wrong. They either focus too much on perks “We have free snacks!” (a mistake I have certainly done myself) or avoid setting clear expectations about the journey ahead. A great employee pitch acknowledges the challenges but also makes the opportunity clear: If we succeed, we’ll have built something extraordinary and you’ll have been a part of it from the ground up.

3 pitches, 1 foundation

At first glance, these three pitches, customer, investor, and employee seem like completely different conversations. But underneath, they’re all rooted in the same core: What you’re building, and why it matters. The magic lies in adjusting the lens for each audience.

The customer pitch is about immediate value, what they gain today. The investor pitch is about future potential, how this will become huge. The employee pitch is about meaning, why this company is worth joining now.

Founders often struggle because they don’t realize that these pitches aren’t just “nice to have". They’re fundamental. Without a strong customer pitch, you won’t sell your product. Without a compelling investor pitch, you won’t raise the capital to grow. Without a clear employee pitch, you won’t attract the talent to build the product.

The good news is that you don’t need to nail all of these perfectly right from day one. But you do need to have the bones of each pitch in place. If you can’t tell customers how your product makes their life better, investors how you’ll scale it, or employees why they should join you, you’re going to have a hard time. The sooner you get these pitches right, the sooner your company can take off.