Ran into an old mentor at a coffee shop in Portland last week

He sat down and told me I was spending way too much time on perfecting my pitch deck instead of just talking to people. Said he landed his first 3 investors just by grabbing coffee and asking what they cared about. Made me realize I've been hiding behind slides for 6 months. Anyone else ever get called out like that and immediately knew they were right?

2 comments

2 Comments

wesley_fox9211d agoTop Commenter

lol this hits hard. I was stuck for like 8 months obsessing over my website copy and demo video while my buddy just went to local startup meetups and pitched his idea over beers. He had his first customer before I even launched. What finally worked for me was setting a low bar like "just buy one person coffee this week and ask them one question about their biggest headache." No slides, no pitch, just listening. Once I stopped treating every conversation like a board meeting presentation, things actually started moving. The best part was realizing most people don't care about your perfect slides anyway, they just want to know if you can solve their problem.

cole_patel4111d ago

Those one-off coffee chats saved me too honestly. Did you ever get pushback from people who thought you were just wasting their time with an informal ask like that? I tried it and a couple folks seemed annoyed I didn't have a proper pitch ready.