The Tech Is Part of the Pitch

Every adult alive has now watched another adult speak for thirty seconds on mute.

You can see them gesturing. You can see them land what is clearly the good part. Someone types "you're on mute" and they don't see it, because they're presenting, and the chat is on the other screen.

It is completely universal and it never stops being uncomfortable to watch.

Here's what founders miss about virtual pitches: the room is judging the whole transmission, not just the content.

In a physical meeting, the building handles most of this. The lighting exists. The chairs point the right way. Nobody has to find the right cable. You walk in and the only variable is you.

On video, all of that becomes your job, and none of it is neutral. A dark room, a laptop on a stack of books pointing up your nose, a share that reveals four other windows and a mail notification — every one of those is information about how you run things. Unfair, probably. Still true.

The thing that costs the most is the fumble at the start. Three minutes of "can you see this now?" before you've said a word about the company. You had a short window of full attention and you spent it on a screen share.

So rehearse the setup, not just the pitch.

Open the deck before the call, in the state you want it seen. Close everything else — not minimized, closed. Know which button shares which window without hunting. Put the camera at eye level and a light in front of you, not behind. Test the audio on the actual call, not a different one.

Then look at the camera, not the faces. It feels wrong and it reads as eye contact, and eye contact is most of what "confident" means on a screen.

One more: on video, silence sounds broken. When you pause for effect, some part of the room wonders if you froze. Keep pauses shorter and keep your face moving.

None of this makes a weak company fundable. But a good company presented through a bad transmission gets scored on the transmission, and you will never know that's what happened.

The tech is not separate from the pitch. On a video call, it is the first slide.

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More on presenting well, in the room or on a screen, in The Pitch Deck Book.

Composite characters, invented companies. The mistakes are real; the people aren't.