Newsletter

Weekly Briefing Note for Founders

9th January 2025

This week on the startup to scaleup journey:
  • Beyond the Pitch Deck: 5 Essential Skills Founders Used to Win Over Investors in 2024

Beyond the Pitch Deck: 5 Essential Skills Founders Used to Win Over Investors in 2024

In our reflection on 2024, How Europe’s Founders Can Turn 2024’s Hard Lessons into 2025 Success, we focused on changing investor behaviour. Today we reflect on how founders have responded - what they have learnt about their own abilities and uncertainties when raising capital in a year where deal numbers collapsed back to 2018 levels.

These insights, garnered from multiple fundraising engagements and dozens of founder conversations, focus on the human side of the equation. These are the topics that founders rarely talk about.

A key insight comes from examining how perspectives on capital raising changed during the 2023/24 downturn. Almost universally, founders say they significantly underestimated the scale of the task - as well as the timeline. Maybe not surprising given that for many the most recent comparator was raising capital during the market high of 2021/22.

But one of the most revealing insights relates to the skills that successful founders discovered were vital to “selling” their vision to investors. Today we look at why changing market conditions elevated the importance of certain skills and what the key takeaways are for founders in 2025.


Post campaign reflections

If we look at how founder perspectives changed during recent funding campaigns, we can group our observations into 3 categories. These all relate in some way to underestimating how venture market conditions continued to deteriorate across Europe right through 2024.

  • Underestimating the SCALE of the task

    Here the words of respected investor Sarah Drinkwater, talking about her own experience in raising her first fund, ring so true: "Fundraising in 2023/2024 was so hilariously hard you have to start naive; otherwise you would not do it."

    Unfortunately for founders, there is usually no option but to do it. As conversion rates (from initial outreach to Term Sheet) have plummeted, it's now more than ever 'the numbers game'. Many founders reached out to well over 100 qualified investor targets before they could secure a sensible offer in 2024.

    And in each case, this required either warm or highly tailored approaches to a specific investor in the fund. This takes significant effort and application. Mail shots don't work in VC.

  • Underestimating the TIMELINE

    Just like the journey to product/market fit, you are searching for the 'true believers'. Gradually a pattern emerges, and you land on an investor persona or a profile that is the ideal fit. But even the believers are taking more time to gain conviction than ever before. Due diligence periods in particular have significantly extended.

    As a result, funding timescales have shot out. For most institutional raises, planning anything less that 9 months from initial outreach to money in the bank is high risk. Having a set of warm, eager and able investors ready and waiting in the wings will of course shorten this cycle. But few founders have a big enough pool of such followers to rely upon.

    The reality is that there are few shortcuts in raising venture capital. You can’t circumvent the process, you just have to go through it.

  • Underestimating the need to "SELL" the vision

    As Drinkwater says, fundraising is a masterclass in human psychology, both yours and everyone you meet. The investor decision, like any buying decision, is an emotional one more that a logical one. Emotion drives behaviour. Buyers then use logic to justify their decision.

    The emotional buying decision is triggered by the impact a founder makes in the first live interaction. Successful founders are often great communicators and masterful sales people. They are not deflected by criticism and radiate an inner belief in the mission that immediately inspires confidence.

    These qualities provide the foundation upon which trust is built. Let's look more closely.


5 skills for selling the vision

Finding an answer to the SCALE and TIMELINE points above should not be difficult: Develop a funding plan and start the process much earlier than you had anticipated.

Finding an answer to "selling the vision" is much more nuanced. Below is a condensed set of insights that focuses on the human and communication skills successful founders discovered were vital to “selling” their vision to investors in 2024. These five points centre on narrative-building, salesmanship, and the resilience needed to push through inevitable challenges.


1. Crafting an irresistible narrative

In 2024, the sheer volume of startups pitching to VCs was higher than ever. Many founders realized that having a strong product or interesting technology alone wasn’t enough to stand out. What sealed the deal was the ability to tell a compelling story - one that mapped out a bold future, highlighted a unique market opportunity, and established the founder’s personal connection to the problem they were solving.

Why It Mattered
When hundreds of pitch decks are flooding inboxes, investors gravitate to founders who can paint a vivid picture of why this company exists and how it will change the world. A powerful narrative pulls people in emotionally, helping them envision a future state where the startup’s solution is indispensable.

Key Takeaways

  • Use storytelling techniques (a relatable problem, a clear hero’s journey, a compelling “why now?”) to make your pitch memorable.
  • Weave in personal anecdotes or founder “aha” moments to give the narrative authenticity and urgency.
  • Show, don’t just tell - demonstrate real-world application or early traction that underscores your story’s credibility.

2. Mastering the art of Investor “Sales”

Founders in 2024 realized that raising capital is not just an administrative activity - it’s essentially selling a product (your company) to a special type of customer (investors). Yet many underestimated how sophisticated this sales process would be. From the initial pitch to due diligence and final negotiations, each step demanded persuasion, active listening, and relationship-building.

Why It Mattered
Investors are constantly on the lookout for teams that can sell - sell the product to end-users, sell future hires on joining the mission, and sell potential partners on collaboration. A founder’s ability to effectively “sell” to them serves as a strong proxy for how well they’ll sell to the rest of the market.

Key Takeaways

  • Treat fundraising like a sales funnel: build a pipeline of potential investors, engage them with tailored outreach, and follow up diligently.
  • Practice active listening: pay attention to what prospective investors care about (e.g., market size, margins, social impact) and frame your pitch around those points.
  • Don’t forget the power of urgency - craft a timeline and highlight key milestones to keep investors engaged and prevent rounds from dragging on.

3. Demonstrating resilience and mental toughness

Even the most promising startups faced dozens of “no’s” before hearing a “yes.” In 2024, with VCs being more selective and due diligence processes stretching longer, founders had to manage an incredible amount of rejection and still keep pushing.

Why It Mattered
Investors are acutely aware that the startup journey is filled with setbacks - product pivots, hiring challenges, and market fluctuations. They take note of how founders handle adversity: do they adapt and come back stronger, or crumble under pressure?

Key Takeaways

  • Embrace the “no’s” as opportunities: use feedback from rejections to refine your pitch, strategy, or target investor profile.
  • Build a support system - mentors, fellow founders, and even mental health professionals - to help weather the emotional toll.
  • Showcase your grit in your pitch by sharing examples of past challenges and how you overcame them. It not only humanizes you but also demonstrates you can handle the inevitable bumps in the road.

4. Using data and metrics to back up your vision

While an emotional narrative is critical, successful founders in 2024 knew that an inspiring story without compelling data would fall flat. As the market cooled even further from 2023, investors began to expect more proof points - whether it was active users, revenue traction, or clear evidence of product/market fit.

Why It Mattered
Investors look for teams who can combine big-picture dreaming with the discipline of data-driven decision-making. Founders who showed mastery over the numbers - market sizing, customer acquisition cost, churn rates - were more likely to instil confidence in investors.

Key Takeaways

  • Balance your big vision with concrete metrics that demonstrate progress. Show that you know exactly how you’ll get from “here” to “there.”
  • Highlight leading indicators (engagement, returning users, or pilot programs) that reinforce your promise of future growth.
  • Be transparent about weaknesses in your metrics, explaining how you plan to address them. This honesty often builds more trust than glossing over shortcomings.

5. Establishing personal credibility and a support network

Increasingly selective investors in 2024 scrutinized not just the product or market, but the people behind it. Founders discovered that building personal credibility - through past achievements, relevant experience, or reputable advisors - was essential to earning the trust of sophisticated investors.

Why It Mattered
Early-stage investments often hinge on the perceived ability of the founding team to execute. Investors want to see that founders have the domain expertise, grit, and network to overcome obstacles and navigate inevitable pivots.

Key Takeaways

  • If you lack a track record, bring on board members or advisors who do. Their endorsements can significantly boost your credibility.
  • Cultivate genuine relationships over time, rather than only contacting investors when you need money. Share periodic updates, attend relevant events, and engage on social media to stay on their radar.
  • Demonstrate thought leadership in your niche - whether through writing articles, speaking at conferences, or contributing to industry forums - to position yourself as a credible, passionate founder.


Conclusion

Raising Seed and Series A capital in 2024 remained a high-stakes endeavour, but founders who excelled in the following areas found more success:

  1. Compelling Narrative: They told an engaging story that resonated emotionally and mapped to a realistic growth plan.
  2. Sales Mindset: They recognised the fundraising process as a sophisticated sale and practiced the skills needed to maintain investor interest.
  3. Resilience: They managed rejection with grit, learned from setbacks, and refined their approach along the way.
  4. Metrics and Proof Points: They substantiated their vision with data and showed a clear roadmap to hitting their next milestones.
  5. Credibility and Networks: They used their backgrounds, reputations, and strategic advisors to build early trust and momentum.

By concentrating on these five core skill sets, the top-performing founders didn’t just raise capital - they built lasting relationships with investors who became active partners in their companies’ success. And in an era where both competition and caution among VCs continued to rise, those human-centred, story-led, and data-backed approaches proved to be more important than ever for closing the deal.


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