EPISODE OVERVIEW

Duration: Approximately 32 minutes

Best For: Business owners who know their product is valuable but struggle to communicate that value to investors, partners, or anyone who needs convincing

Key Outcome: Walk away with a proven five-part framework you can use today to restructure any pitch and dramatically increase your chances of getting the yes you need

THE BOTTOM LINE

You have built something valuable. You know it works. But every time you try to explain it to investors, partners, or even potential clients, something gets lost in translation. Ben Weiner spent years as an entrepreneur getting cursed out by investors before discovering that passion and integrity are not enough. His research revealed that 82% of investors find pitches poorly organized, not because the ideas are bad, but because founders present information in the wrong order. The HEART framework Ben shares in this episode is the exact structure that helped him build a successful venture capital fund from nothing and invest in a company the President of the United States called the most promising startup in the world. This is not another vague business concept. This is a concrete, five-step system you can implement in the next hour.

WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS TO YOU

Stop wasting months chasing funding with pitches that repel investors before you even get to your solution

Learn the exact order of information that matches how investor brains actually process decisions

Understand why being passionate and honest about your business is not enough to get people to say yes

Discover the specific mistakes that make investors tune out in the first 60 seconds and how to fix them immediately

KEY INSIGHTS YOU CAN IMPLEMENT TODAY

Your pitch fails before you start because you answer the wrong question first. Investors ask what you do, but answering that question directly is the fastest way to lose them. Set the stage first with what you believe.

The train metaphor changes everything. You are the entrepreneur driving the train, zooming out of the station with excitement. But investors are still on the platform with unanswered questions. You must bring them aboard before you leave.

Start with a belief statement, not a mission statement. The first words out of your mouth should be I believe or we believe. This creates a provocative claim that demands attention and sets you apart from everyone else.

Alternatives before solutions. Before you introduce your solution, you must expose how all current alternatives are grossly inadequate. This creates the contrast that makes your solution shine.

You come last, not first. Most founders lead with their team and credentials. The HEART framework puts team traits and skills at the end, after you have built the case for why this matters.

GOLDEN QUOTES WORTH REMEMBERING

"I was deeply passionate about what I was doing. But that wasn't clicking with investors." - Ben Weiner

"82% of investors said, on average, these pitches are just not well organized. It's not that they didn't like the idea, just the quality of the information wasn't properly organized." - Ben Weiner

"The metaphor I always use is the train. You're the entrepreneur driving the train, you quickly zoom out of the station, but the investors are still back on the platform wondering about all these questions." - Ben Weiner

"Being better or optimized is not good enough in startup land. It needs to be an order of magnitude better." - Ben Weiner

"I think founders are obsessed with their missions, they're obsessed with their products. They're not focused on the stupid pitch deck to bozos like me that need to give them money." - Ben Weiner

QUICK NAVIGATION FOR BUSY LEADERS

00:00 - Introduction: Meet Ben Weiner, venture capitalist and author of a novel that teaches pitching

03:45 - The HEART Framework Origin Story: How getting cursed out by investors led to a breakthrough

08:20 - Why 82% of Pitches Fail: Survey results that reveal what investors really think

12:30 - The Train Metaphor: Understanding why investors are not on board with your pitch

15:45 - H is for Hypothesis: Why you must start with a belief statement

18:30 - E is for Enormous Stakes: Making investors care about the problem

20:15 - A is for Alternatives: Exposing why everything else fails

22:40 - R is for Radically Differentiated Solution: Introducing your hero

24:50 - T is for Traits and Skills: Why your team credentials come last

27:30 - The Live Workshop Transformation: How founders change their pitch in 10 minutes

30:00 - Free Resources and Where to Access the Complete Playbook

GUEST SPOTLIGHT

Name: Ben Weiner

Bio: Ben Weiner is a Jerusalem-based venture capitalist who built a successful fund with an unconventional hyperlocal investment thesis. His portfolio includes Breezometer, named by the President of the United States as the most promising startup in the world and later acquired by Google for hundreds of millions of dollars. Ben is also the author of a novel teaching the HEART pitch framework, which hit number one on Amazon in three categories.

Connect with Ben:

Website: https://jumpspeed.vc

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benwiener/

YOUR NEXT ACTIONS

This Week: Download the free playbook at ForPitchBook.com and complete the pitch generator exercise. Fill in your answers to the five HEART questions and create your elevator pitch today.

This Month: Restructure your main investor or client pitch using the HEART framework. Test it with three trusted advisors and refine based on their feedback.

This Quarter: Use the HEART framework in every important business conversation, whether pitching investors, recruiting key hires, or presenting to strategic partners. Track your conversion rates and adjust.

EPISODE RESOURCES

For Pitch Book Website: ForPitchBook.com - Free online playbook with interactive annotated slides

The Heart of the Perfect Pitch (novel by Ben Weiner) - Available on Amazon

Free Pitch Generator Tool - Available at ForPitchBook.com after completing the playbook

Simon Sinek's "Start With Why" TED Talk and Book - Referenced as foundation for the Hypothesis element

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

READY TO ESCAPE THE TRAP?

Take the Freedom Score Quiz: https://scoreapp.atpbos.com/

Discover how trapped you are in your business and get your personalized roadmap to freedom in under 5 minutes.

Book a Free Strategy Session: https://www.atpbos.com/contact

Let's discuss how to build a business that works WITHOUT you.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST, ROY CASTLEMAN

Roy is the founder of All The Power Limited and creator of Elevate360, a business coaching system for entrepreneurs ready to scale without burnout. As a certified Wim Hof Method Instructor and the UK's first certified BOS UP coach, Roy combines AI automation, wellness practices, and business operating systems to help trapped entrepreneurs reclaim their freedom.

Website: www.atpbos.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roycastleman/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@allthepowerltd

How we're doing power movers. I'm here today with Ben

2

Wiener, who is in Jerusalem. And Ben is a venture

3

capitalist. He has written a novel which is about

4

pitching yourself in venture capital, the venture capital world. Quite

5

an interesting story. So I'll let you introduce yourself, Ben,

6

and let's dig into your story of how people should

7

raise money, but more importantly. Yeah. How you get to

8

be where you are. Okay, thanks, Roy. Thanks for giving

9

me the opportunity. We had a great conversation when we

10

talked a couple weeks ago and I'm very impressed with

11

your personal story. So I think there's a lot of

12

overlap between some of the trials and tribulations that I

13

talk about in this fictional story and a lot of

14

what we go through in real life as entrepreneurs and

15

creative people. So the short story is that, as you

16

said, I'm a venture capitalist or I tell people I'm

17

a professional investor and an unprofessional author. So the book

18

I wrote as a labor of love or a hobby

19

project to try to teach something about pitching that frankly,

20

I could have taught in a 1000 word blog post,

21

but instead decided to teach in a 250 page novel.

22

It was fun to write a story about this poor

23

guy who is very well meaning, has an interesting idea

24

for his startup, but very quickly we realize that he's

25

in big trouble. He's making a lot of the mistakes

26

that classical entrepreneurs make, but in his case, those basic

27

mistakes go to a very wild extreme. And he can't

28

pitch his startup to save his life until he actually

29

needs to pitch his startup to save his life. And

30

it's a teaching tool to teach bad pitch, good pitch.

31

It's always the same company, it's the same technology that

32

he's trying to present to investors. In the beginning, it's

33

not working for him and things go off the rails

34

very quickly. And it's my way of exposing entrepreneurs

35

to a classical kind of startup pitch framework. And then

36

why that doesn't work often. And then what he needs

37

to discover and what the elements are of an optimal

38

startup pitch. And not to give away the ending because

39

the ending has plenty of twists anyway. But clearly at

40

some point deep into the story, he finds out or

41

discovers. Through what he goes through, he finds this framework

42

that I'm trying to teach. It's still not clear that

43

it's going to be on time or that he's going

44

to get out of the situation that he's in. Even

45

if you have a sense of where the story's going,

46

there's still Some good twists and turns at the end,

47

and there are lots of other lessons in the book

48

that relate to the startup journey. But the main point

49

of the book is this five part H E A

50

R T the heart of the perfect pitch framework that

51

I'm trying to teach. And then I'll just say, you

52

don't need to buy the book. The book is fun

53

and it's been a fun experience. The book reached number

54

one on Amazon very quickly in its three nonfiction categories.

55

It's got some great endorsements, it's got a lot of

56

great social proof, straight 50 ratings, blah, blah, blah. But

57

you don't need to buy the book if you want

58

to understand the framework. I'm giving it away for free.

59

You can go to the website and download all sorts

60

of materials. The book is just a fun way to

61

consume it and to learn some other things about startup

62

life. But I'm not trying to withhold it. It's a

63

gift back to the industry. That's been very good to

64

me. It's a fun way to teach something that I

65

had a lot of fun uncovering or researching and then

66

just wanted to give back to the community. I love

67

that we spoke and you straight away, you made your

68

perfect playbook available to me, which I shared with a

69

few people and I went through it myself and yeah,

70

some really insightful things in there. And this idea of

71

giving back is so important, isn't it? You know, we're

72

in this world of take, and I just think it's

73

high time people are actually giving back. And. And like

74

you, I think the entrepreneur is just the best person

75

out there. We go out, we see a problem in

76

the world, we get passionate about fixing that problem in

77

the world. Yeah. And then so many of us end

78

up in this. The same kind of space as your

79

characters that you end up in a space where, yeah,

80

it's. The world's just crashing down around us and yeah,

81

I'm sure you in your own journey and just dig

82

into that a little bit in your own journey, you've

83

had some of these trials and tribulations yourself. My wife

84

never left me, and I wasn't chased by murderous mobsters

85

and I wasn't thrown in jail. And the extreme. Ben,

86

it's still early, right? It's still early. It's still fine.

87

She may still. But what's funny or not funny is

88

that almost all of the stuff that happened in the

89

beginning were things that happened to me and happened to

90

lots of other people that I know. So the beginnings

91

of his problem were very common. And I experienced a

92

lot of those things, too, as an entrepreneur. They just

93

get extreme in the book because it's got to be

94

a fun story. So, yes, these things are very real.

95

They're very common. They're common in. They were common in

96

my life. They were common in the lives of lots

97

of entrepreneurs that I work with. And I was trying

98

to address that. There's no single entrepreneurial journey, but there

99

are things that happen a lot, and I was trying

100

to capture a lot of those things that happened. A

101

lot of the misunderstandings, a lot of the misconceptions, a

102

lot of the miscalculations. Give us a flavor for what

103

some of those were in your journey. Tell us a

104

little bit more about yourself. How do you get to

105

be sitting here with me on this podcast? Obviously, you've

106

written a book, and what do you do? How do

107

you do it? And obviously we understand the concept of

108

venture capital, but how does it fit into Ben's world?

109

I'll go back to something that you said earlier. I

110

wouldn't be talking to you today, and I wouldn't not

111

have written this book if I had not paid it

112

forward or done some nice things for people without any

113

expectation of rewards. Just keep that as a backdrop. My

114

journey into venture capital was very unprobable and very accidental

115

and still was very unlikely to work out. The odds

116

were against me. I had a very unusual, localized, hyperlocal,

117

unusual contrarian investment thesis, and I had no money and

118

no track record as an investor. Twelve years ago, I

119

really had no right to start trying to do what

120

I did. I was very passionate about the opportunity that

121

I thought I had seen. I thought I had seen

122

something about the future of my city, of my local

123

market that other people had not yet realized. And I'm

124

highly credentialed. I went to a very good law school.

125

I'm a very honest, very straight shooter. And I thought

126

that would be enough. Some people would just say, oh,

127

Ben's a good guy. He's clearly educated. Let's just give

128

them some money. And nobody did. My pitch was so

129

bad, even though it was honest, but it just wasn't

130

resonating with anybody. And it only clicked for me when

131

two different investors actually cursed me out. They got so

132

upset. And the question is, it was just a business.

133

I wasn't trying to be offensive. But when you have

134

an unusual idea that is counter to the status quo,

135

sometimes it's so uncomfortable for people that they react, like,

136

very strongly. And thankfully, it took those two people to

137

Actually tell me that I was an effing idiot or

138

that I was full of shit. It took that for

139

me to shock me, to realize my passion and my

140

integrity is not enough to carry this. I need to

141

show more evidence. I need to reframe my pitch. And

142

that began my journey 12 years ago into trying to

143

understand what makes a good pitch, what makes a bad

144

pitch into a good pitch. You're pitching the same thing.

145

I was always pitching the same investment opportunity. But once

146

I reframed it for investors the way they wanted to

147

hear it, with the structure that they wanted, things started

148

to click and I was able to get the fund

149

off the ground. And by the way, that first fund

150

that I had so much difficulty in raising 12 years

151

ago ended up investing in a company that was named

152

by the. I'm not making this up. That was named

153

by the President of the United States as the most

154

promising startup in the world. And that startup, called breezometer,

155

ended up being acquired by Google couple years ago for

156

hundreds of millions of dollars. And I was on my

157

way to success in the most improbable of locations and

158

investment theses. And it only happened because A, I got

159

slammed in the face for a really bad pitch. I

160

then went to work studying pitching and like beginning to

161

understand what the structure of a good pitch is. And

162

that led me to write this book, which became number

163

one on Amazon. So the whole thing was so crazy

164

that my failures were what caused me to work hard

165

and understand how to be successful. And so had I

166

not gone through those trials, I don't think I'd be

167

where I am today. And therefore the book and all

168

this work is just a way of very sincerely giving

169

back to the industry saying thank you for allowing me

170

to figure this out. And I want to give this

171

back to other entrepreneurs so that they can have an

172

easier time trying to do what they're doing. So that's

173

a roundabout way of how A, I got into venture

174

capital, B, how I was successful in getting it off

175

the ground when it was unlikely to succeed, and C,

176

how can you. Tell us what that idea was? I'm

177

intrigued. No, the idea was I moved. I'm from the

178

U.S. you can hear from my accent. I'm not from

179

Israel. I moved to this country years ago as a

180

lawyer and now I'm a venture capitalist. Like I'm a

181

stranger in a strange land investing in Israeli startup companies

182

that are from my city, from Jerusalem. I invest only

183

in one city, which is very unusual. And that city

184

had really underperformed for A long time, and I just

185

had seen some change in the local environment. Thirteen years

186

ago, I was just lucky to stumble into some meetups

187

and said, hey, I think this is big enough that

188

somebody could build a small fund around this unique opportunity

189

and just try to own it before anybody else realizes

190

everybody else. It's a tiny little country, but most of

191

the opportunities are in Tel Aviv and all of the

192

investors are there. Almost all. And my thesis was the

193

arbitrage of most to all, saying most of the opportunities

194

are there, but almost all the attention is there. And

195

in that gap, in the few opportunities that there are

196

in my city, I could probably scoop them and find

197

them before other people see them. That was the thesis.

198

Most people thought that was completely ridiculous. My best friend

199

told me, just stop. Stop trying to raise money for

200

this thing. Just go get a job. It's never going

201

to work. Nobody's going to give you money. And until

202

those two investors actually cursed me out, I realized that

203

he was right. I just wasn't pitching it properly, but

204

I still believed that there was an opportunity. And then,

205

like I said, I restructured the pitch and was able

206

to click with a couple investors. So that's what I

207

do on a daily basis. I just sit in my

208

city and invest in a handful of the best startups

209

that come out of this ecosystem. But the writing is

210

meant for everybody around the world. The writing about startup

211

methodology are things that I've learned that I think apply

212

everywhere. And I've started to teach this framework around the

213

world. Even though I learned it on the ground here

214

in one country, I think it applies broadly. The book

215

itself is set in the United States, so even though

216

I live in another country, the entire story takes place

217

in New Jersey, but it really could apply anywhere in

218

the world. I love that honest approach. You go through

219

your own experiences, and when you go through your own

220

experiences, that's what shapes you. That's what actually. Yeah. And

221

if you're an entrepreneur, I think you end up having

222

the gumption to carry on and to really keep on

223

pushing and keep on pushing and keep on pushing. Yeah.

224

And if you don't keep on pushing, you don't make

225

it past the starting gates. Yeah, it's so easy to

226

fall back into that. I'll just go and get a

227

job. And yeah, entrepreneurs don't. But again, passion isn't

228

enough, unfortunately. It's great to be passionate about what you

229

do, but a lot of passionate founders still don't succeed.

230

And I was failing. I was deeply passionate about what

231

I was doing. But that wasn't clicking with investors. I

232

just didn't understand deeply enough that they would not give

233

me the benefit of the doubt that they would not

234

give me because they see so many things. They're wired

235

to be skeptical and try to find the red flags

236

in what you're saying. And I was making that too

237

easy for them. So I needed to front load my

238

pitch with lots of other evidence or lots of other

239

claims before I even told them what it was that

240

I was trying to do. I needed to set the

241

stage for the problem and bring evidence about the opportunity

242

and then hit them with what I wanted to do

243

about it, rather than just right away blasting them with

244

my great idea and how I was going to do

245

it. The metaphor I always use is it's like the

246

train. You're the entrepreneur, you're driving the train. You start

247

off at the station, you quickly zoom out of the

248

station and you're off and running. But the investors are

249

still back on the platform, like, still wondering about all

250

these questions. And you don't realize that they're not on

251

the train with you. So you're just often running with

252

your pitch, but they're still back with all these questions.

253

So you got. You have to address those questions or

254

those objections before you rattle off all the amazing things

255

that you want to do. Now, that's just the beginning

256

of the framework. But that was a big part of,

257

I think, a fatal mistake that a lot of people

258

make when they're pitching something that they're passionate about. They

259

don't realize that the people that are listening to them

260

usually don't share that passion right away. And you said,

261

I think one of the statistics was something like 82%

262

of investors say that the pitches are letting people down.

263

Yeah, we did a survey before I wrote the book.

264

I wanted to. I just was questioning myself all the

265

time. Maybe it's me, maybe I'm a bozo and I

266

don't like these pitches, but maybe other investors don't find

267

them problematic. So we did a survey around 20, 20

268

of other VCs around the world and was anonymized so

269

that they knew that we didn't know who they were.

270

And it was just unequivocally powerful. They all said the

271

pitch and the pitch deck are very important to us.

272

But like you said, over 82% said, on average, these

273

pitches are just not well organized. It's not that they

274

didn't like the venture itself or the idea, just the

275

quality of the information wasn't properly organized. And that Focus

276

on organization of the pitch, on how the information is

277

structured and ordered, became my life's mission over the next

278

two or three years to research, A, like, why is

279

that we're in 2020, 2021. Why has nobody made this

280

clear? Why is there so much confusion? And then B,

281

okay, then what is the. Is there such thing as

282

a framework that can apply to whether you have a

283

medical device startup or a software startup or an AI

284

startup? Is there one single framework? Is there optimal framework

285

to structure your pitch? And I believe that the answer

286

is generally yes. And the only reason I believe that

287

is because I took these structures from other fields where

288

they've been identified for many years, and I just translated

289

it into Startup Speak, a way that founders could relate

290

to. And yeah, you've helped a number of startups with

291

this. Now, how's that all going? I really like the

292

fact that this is your last work and really pushing

293

forward. So I guess you're wearing two hats at the

294

moment. You're wearing the hat of let's go and do

295

some investing and let's find the people. And then when

296

you find them, it's okay, guys, you didn't tell me

297

that pitch properly. So let me teach you how to

298

do the pitch properly and you can pitch it back

299

to me. Yeah, I become that annoying person sometimes. I

300

don't know if you ever had friends like this, but

301

when you were young and in the old days when

302

we wrote letters to each other, so. Yeah, I remember

303

them. There's always that friend that would, like, circle your

304

mistakes and send it back to you. You didn't capitalize

305

this. So I feel like I'm that guy with startup

306

pitches. Like, people will pitch their startups to me and

307

I'll send back. I really think that you should reorder

308

it and please see my playbook and just use this.

309

It's gonna be better. Some people appreciate it. Some people

310

find that incredibly annoying. But I'm really just trying to

311

be helpful. The people that have used it, the most

312

important feedback for me, I'm super happy that the book

313

hit number one on Amazon. It's ego. From an ego

314

point of view, that's a great day, but that's very

315

fleeting. I'm really happy that the book has straight 5.0

316

reviews on Amazon. At some point, somebody will give it

317

a four, but so far it's been straight fives. That's

318

also amazing. That's not why I did it. I'm not

319

trying to make money off the book. I'm giving the

320

proceeds to charity. Why did I do it? I did

321

it because I want to get that feedback, which I've

322

gotten a few times, and from an entrepreneur who said,

323

oh, my gosh, I used your framework and I raised

324

money. Or I used the framework and I found that

325

I was more in control. I felt power of control

326

over my pitch. I felt comfortable with it in a

327

way that I had never felt before. That's why I

328

did the work. And that's worth more to me than

329

any review or sales figures or anything like that. Again,

330

it was a way of giving back to the industry.

331

And. And that's the result that I wanted. I wanted

332

even if one person. I felt if I put out

333

this book and even one person says to me, oh,

334

my God, this helped me raise my round, then it

335

was worth it. And thankfully, in a few months, I've

336

already gotten a few of those, both within my orbit

337

of people that I know and even strangers who I've

338

heard from. So that is by far the most important

339

feedback that I've gotten. And I look forward to many

340

more of those positive pieces of feedback. And when

341

you're going out, you're doing podcasts, you're doing. What else

342

are you doing in this education space to really help

343

people? And where do you find them? It's a. Yeah,

344

there's business shows, there's all these kind of things that

345

obviously are melting pots. But what's working for you at

346

the moment? Yeah, I don't do great at self promotion,

347

but people have found me or people know me. So

348

I've. I actually had my first international keynote. Like, I.

349

I was flown out to a startup event. I do

350

a lot of that here in my country. But this

351

was the first time that a group overseas flew me

352

out to give this keynote and this workshop to a

353

collection of founders. So it really works well in an

354

accelerator program or a startup conference, where there are a

355

lot of entrepreneurs in the same room and they're all

356

trying to do the same thing, which is raise money

357

from bozos like me. And I can get up and

358

present this framework in 45 minutes or an hour and

359

say, here's a free upgrade. It's almost like you're getting

360

on the plane and the flight attendant says, sir, would

361

you like to have a free upgrade to business class?

362

I'm trying to offer that. So in a group setting

363

at an accelerator program or an incubator or a venture

364

capital portfolio. So I've been doing a lot of that

365

in all those VC portfolios, incubators, accelerators, startup

366

Conferences. I love doing the workshop and when it works

367

well, it's almost like a mentalist exercise. Sometimes I bring

368

like a founder or two up. It's a closed room

369

so it's not being filmed. And I say, you don't

370

know me, come in peace. I'm not trying to embarrass

371

you, but quick, go, give me two minute pitch. And

372

it's very difficult for them to do that off the

373

cuff. And I'm at my watch and I stop them

374

after 120 seconds. Then I give my lecture and I

375

give them the five part framework. And I say, okay,

376

take 10 minutes, write down your answers to these five

377

things. Now get up and do it again. Just read

378

what you have. And it's transformative. Like it's just a

379

totally. It's the same person who just did it an

380

hour before it's the same company. Suddenly everyone like picks

381

their heads up. It's like, how did you do that

382

to the founder? Not to me, to the person making

383

the pitch. And so those kind of moments are very

384

special. And starts to give a hint that there might

385

be something to this. I can explain the research behind

386

it and why it works so well. There's a ton

387

of. There's years of research behind it. But I've down

388

to these five things that I think really are the

389

pressure points that work best with a typical investor. Can

390

you give us a flavor for those? If that's. Yeah,

391

I can just rattle them off. So it's a five

392

part framework that I call the Hart H eart. It's

393

an acronym. So the H E A R T of

394

the perfect pitch. And what I'm trying to say is

395

these are the five pressure points of. Objection. The investment

396

line. And these are the ones you have to address

397

and neutralize. Like they are the pitch. And then if

398

you have more time, you expand these out. If this

399

is all the time you have, you can do this

400

in a minute or two or three. Just do these

401

five things. And those five things are H. The H

402

is the only one that doesn't really fit so well.

403

It should have been a W, but W E a

404

R T doesn't work. So I made it an H.

405

The H is hypothesis. Start with yes. So every pitch

406

should start off with a belief statement. Not a mission

407

statement, not a value statement, a statement that says I

408

believe or we believe. We at. Hi, I'm Ben. I

409

believe that the startup pitch is broken. I believe that

410

it's either a problem or an opportunity. It's one of

411

the two or Both. Like, there's a huge problem in

412

the world today or going to be soon, or there's

413

a huge opportunity in the world today. But I believe

414

something about the future that doesn't exist today in that

415

way. I've thrown down the gauntlet to the investor and

416

I've said, pay attention to me because I believe something.

417

This is like a religious. Almost a religious experience for

418

me. And I want you to either nod and say

419

you already believe it or probably you don't yet know

420

enough about it, but you're willing to listen to me

421

because I've challenged you. I've said, okay, pay attention to

422

me because I'm going to say something that is provocative,

423

that is unproven. That's the H hypothesis. Start with Y.

424

This is based on Simon Sinek's famous TED Talk and

425

his book Start with why I'm just riffing on work

426

that other people have done. Okay. E. Enormous stakes. There's

427

a lot at stake. Again, notice when I'm getting into

428

the solution, like when somebody asks me what or an

429

assignment entrepreneur, what you do? What I'm saying is, don't

430

answer that question. It's not what you do. It's all

431

these things first, and then you get to what you

432

do. So, A, here's what I believe. Number two, there's

433

a lot at stake about this problem or opportunity. There's

434

human life, human suffering, dollars and cents cost. Whatever it

435

is, it's big opportunity. So there's a lot at stake.

436

You have to pay attention to this movie because the

437

damsel is really in distress. Like, the train is coming.

438

She's tied to the railroad tracks. You've got to pay

439

attention and hope that we can save this thing. It's

440

not just a kid in a candy store who wants

441

a lollipop. There's a damsel in distress tied to the

442

railroad tracks. A. Alternatives are grossly inadequate. Again, I

443

still haven't told you what I want to do. I'm

444

setting up the stage. I believe this. There's a lot

445

at stake. And the alternatives. Here's the current state of

446

play, and it's all messed up. They're all terrible. All

447

the ways to get this damsel off those railroad tracks

448

are just not going to work in the period of

449

time that we have. And then finally, the fourth thing

450

out of the five is R. Here we finally introduce

451

the hero. He comes riding in on his white steed

452

to save the damsel in distress. The R is the

453

radically differentiated solution. So it's an order of magnitude just

454

game Changing different than all the bad stuff that we

455

just set up in the A. So the A was

456

alternatives are grossly inadequate. They're all terrible. And then, in

457

contrast, our hero is a radical, revolutionary, totally

458

differentiated solution that is 10 times better order of magnitude,

459

game changing, paradigm shifting, that's the ideal. And then by

460

then, the investor really has to react to that. They

461

have to decide whether we've proven or not proven, but

462

at least set the stage for a basis for belief.

463

And then finally, the T are us. That's the we

464

leave ourselves for last, the team. But it's not just

465

team. It's the T stands for traits and skills. It's

466

not just the team who we are, but it's why

467

we are the right band of fools to do this

468

crazy thing. Like, what is our credibility and ability? Two

469

different things. What is our credibility and what are our

470

divided abilities on the team? Or if it's just me,

471

why do I have all the ability to do this

472

crazy thing that I just set up? And those are

473

five parts. And I believe that the 82% of investors

474

that told us that they're not happy were basically trying

475

to say what I felt that in most pitches, not

476

only are those five things not emphasized, but I've been

477

in pitches where none of those five elements were even

478

mentioned at all. Wow. There was no belief statement. There

479

was no sense of the size of the opportunity. They

480

just assumed that we knew it. There was no real

481

discussion of all the alternatives. There was just a competition

482

slide, which was artificial and just mentioned a couple companies

483

that were close but didn't discuss the whole range of

484

things that humans do to solve that problem. The solution

485

was not. The differentiation of the solution was not stressed.

486

It was just, yeah, we have something better. And like

487

in school, if you have the best grade on the

488

paper, you're going to get the best grade in the

489

class. Being better or optimized is not good enough in

490

startup land. It needs to be an order of magnitude

491

better in order to attract the attention of the customers.

492

And then finally, on the team, usually you just have

493

on a team slide a bunch of pretty faces and

494

their titles and where they worked before. But it doesn't

495

tell me enough about what the credibility and the divided

496

roles and responsibilities among how. Why are you the CEO

497

and why is she the cto? I mean, why did

498

you decide that? Tell me about your backgrounds and your

499

skills. That gives me the belief that you have the

500

Personas on the team to be able to build, design

501

and sell this thing. So I've Been in pitches where

502

I've kept a mental checklist and all five of the

503

critical elements of the pitch were not there. And that's

504

very depressing. I use a lot of metaphors, but what

505

the investors were telling us is we're the judges in

506

a singing contest and five out of six times the

507

people coming to pitch to us are singing out of

508

key. It just becomes very frustrating. And I'm not putting

509

down founders. I think if you ask me why this

510

is happening, I have deep respect for founders. I was

511

one for a long time. I think founders are obsessed

512

with their missions, they're obsessed with their products, they're obsessed

513

with the thing that they want to do and they're

514

just very focused on that. They're not focused on the

515

stupid pitch deck to bozos like me that need to

516

give them money. And so they just throw a bunch

517

of things on the deck and they figure out if

518

they were invited into the meeting, the investor is smart

519

enough to figure out what they have. And many of

520

us are really busy and we're not wired to do

521

that extra work, wired to find a reason to say

522

no and move on, because we're going to invest in

523

one or two out of 100 things that we see.

524

And so the founder does need, unfortunately, to focus on

525

the same way they're focusing on their game changing product

526

and their hiring and all the other things they're doing,

527

they need to focus on the optimal way to present

528

that information to bozos like me. And I've given them

529

the framework to say, here, use this. And it's just

530

going to be easier for us to digest it. It's

531

going to work with the way our brains work and

532

you'll have a better chance of connecting with us. I

533

think that's quite an important kind of point there. Founders,

534

we get so often we get so caught in the

535

business that we end up not working on the business

536

enough. It's almost the same element at play here. The

537

big piece that I teach is the business operating system

538

world. All of these things and we get stuck in

539

that, okay, let's just get it done. And I'm doing

540

14 hours a day and five, five, seven days a

541

week and just keep on going because I've got to

542

get this over the line. I've got to get the

543

solution done. I've got to get the client happy. I've

544

got to keep the, keep the staff and get new

545

stuff in. And yeah, it doesn't need to be that

546

hard. If you just have a framework like you're saying

547

you know and you can make your life easier. Why

548

not do that? Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Stepping forward, where

549

do you see this going for you? How do you

550

see this evolving into better things? Is there are speaking

551

career. Yeah. Coming forward is. Is a training career. Yeah.

552

What. What are you thinking? This is a side project

553

and it's a labor of love for me. I'm very,

554

like I said, I'm very happy making my living as

555

a venture capitalist and that's what I do. From what

556

I tell people is 120% of my time is on

557

my venture capital stuff and so the other 30% is

558

on this book. So this is extra time for me.

559

This is the main game is that I'm playing is

560

is on the pitch is venture capital. The extra time

561

I'm using for this and therefore wherever it goes, I'm

562

happy to run with it. I don't have a formal

563

plan for promoting. I should, I've done some promotion but

564

very minimal. It's been mostly word of mouth and viral

565

and I'm happy to see that happen. I don't have

566

aspirations of being a professional speaker. Like I said, I'm

567

a professional venture capitalist. I'm an unprofessional author. I'm happy

568

to keep it that way. I love speaking about it.

569

I love being invited to groups to present it. It's

570

fun to see the looks on their faces and get

571

the reactions from them because it's entertaining but it's also

572

very enlightening. It's an eye opening realization for them when

573

they see how it works. So that's incredibly joyous for

574

me. But I think yeah, I'm gonna. You've said a

575

couple of times I'm the bozo and I'm the. Yeah.

576

And to me so many times when you get into

577

the space where you're actually doing something, you know, as

578

passionate, when you're super passionate about this, we can just

579

feel it coming across the screen and the. When you

580

get to that point and you're not looking for that

581

big gain and you're not chasing the money, you know,

582

so often that's when things happen. I think I'm going

583

to watch the space for some good interest and see

584

where Ben's. Where Ben ends up because it's going to

585

be an interesting place. I've been told that it's obvious

586

that I'm very self deprecating. I love making fun of

587

myself. I do take. I take my work very seriously.

588

This is very important to me. But I think you

589

can have a lot of self confidence but also not

590

take yourself too seriously. I think, I think either I'm

591

schizophrenic or that is balance that I have. So I

592

love making fun of myself but believe me, I feel

593

very strongly about this framework and I love promoting it

594

and giving it to people. So I think it's a

595

balance. Like yeah, I would love every entrepreneur in the

596

world to find this framework and to use it and

597

I think most of them would find it helpful. I

598

would love to figure out a way to get it

599

to everybody. I don't think I'll ever be able to

600

get it to all the founders, but I do not

601

take myself like too seriously to think that I am

602

truly a best selling author for life. I think this

603

was a very exciting process of getting this book to

604

print and very exciting to see it hit number one.

605

I did not expect it to stay there forever, but

606

the more people that can get it and use it,

607

the happier I'll be. Amazing. And yeah, thank you very

608

much for joining me. It's been inspiring talking to you.

609

I will put your pitch deck at the bottom here.

610

If people want to get hold of you, what's the

611

best way of doing that? So the best way prefer

612

them to get to the content. The content is@ForpitchBook.com and

613

that's not just links to where you can get the

614

but like I said, you can get a lot of

615

free resources there. So there's a free online playbook that

616

gives you interactive annotated slides. It gives you the 10

617

slides that you need for your 10 slide pitch deck

618

with a lot of explanation about why those slides and

619

what should go on them and what should not. It's

620

very good by the way. It's very good. A lot

621

of fun. That's totally free. And at the end of

622

that there's a pitch generator which is not what you

623

think. It's not an AI. Although people friends of mine

624

have made this into an AI. I prefer to view

625

the founder as the AI. I'm saying he or she

626

is the one that has the information in their head.

627

I'm just trying to extract it out of them and

628

get them to present it this way. So at the

629

end of the playbook there's a pitch generator where you

630

can fill in and just keep trying your answers to

631

those questions. It's very tightly character constrained because it's a

632

forcing function to get you to really just give the

633

and that spits out what is basically the perfect H

634

E A R T elevator pitch for your startup and

635

I really encourage people to keep trying that and use

636

that in more condensed settings or use that as the

637

framework to expand out their pitch. Great. As I say,

638

I'll put all that information down below. Thank you so

639

much for joining us, and we look forward to seeing

640

where it goes. Thanks for having me, Roy. I really

641

appreciate it. Have a great day.