
How to hone your startup pitch for every audience — and avoid ‘show-up-and-throw-up'
At the 'Honing Your Pitch: For Sales, Investors & Employees' panel at the 2025 Technical.ly Builders Conference, three seasoned leaders shared what makes a pitch resonate and what many founders still miss.
Moderated by Barry Wright, an executive at healthtech company Noom, the panel featured Ben Bartolome, vice president of commercial banking for startups at J.P. Morgan; Naza Shelley, founder and CEO of matchmaking startup CarpeDM; and David Cummings, founder and CEO of Atlanta Ventures.
'You'll pitch about 10,000 times in the life of your startup,' Wright said. 'Every conversation is a pitch.'
One takeaway from panelists is to be deeply prepared, but share just enough to spark interest without overwhelming your audience.
Shelley, whose startup has raised more than $2 million, said preparation is crucial, especially for underrepresented founders.
'Asking for money is hard and harder for minorities, and triply so for Black women,' Shelly said. 'If I don't know an answer cold, I'm written off as incompetent. I learned I must be super prepared, know every detail, anticipate every question.'
Cummings, a co-founder of marketing automation company Pardot and early Calendly backer, offered a hard-won lesson from his early years as a founder.
'I suffered early from the 'show-up-and-throw-up,'' Cummings said. 'I wanted them to know every detail and got lost in word salad. Now, I simplify. Give just enough, with a hook, so they say, 'Tell me more.' If I overwhelm them, I fail.'
Even when a pitch doesn't go as planned, there's often lessons to take away.
Bartolome, a former fintech founder, recalled a fumbled B2B negotiation that cost him a six-figure deal and valuable traction.
'They wanted 5% equity for early partnership,' he said. 'I refused. We haggled over single-digit points and lost a six-figure [annual recurring revenue] deal plus strategic momentum. In hindsight, that 5% was nothing compared with the benefit.'
How to handle the talkative investor
What do you do when a potential funder won't let you speak?
'Be excited,' Shelley advised. 'They're engaged. Flow with their questions, weave your points into answers. Your goal is their decision, not your slide order.'
The real objective of a first investor meeting is simply to get a second one, Cummings added.
However, founders should also be mindful of their most limited resource: time. Chasing too many investors can be a distraction. If a startup can grow through customer revenue, more VC calls don't always mean more value, according to Bartolome.
'Some founders schedule 200 VC calls,' Bartolome said. 'If customer revenue can fund you, focus there. A few high-probability VC calls beat 200 low-probability ones.'
To avoid dragging out fruitless conversations, Bartolome recommended clarity.
'[Ask] timeline questions,' he said. ''When do you issue term sheets? 'When should I follow up?' If they can't answer, treat it as a soft no.'
Sometimes, though, getting a fast 'no' from a potential investor can be a blessing in disguise, according to Shelly.
'I push to 'no' quickly,' Shelly said. 'After one to two meetings, I ask check size, timeline, [if they] lean yes or no. If no, I drop them to annual updates.'
Tailor your pitch to the audience — while staying authentic
Founders tend to perfect their pitch for investors, but often forget how crucial it is when talking to potential employees. This, too, is a kind of sale.
'I ask about capacity and willingness for early-stage hours,' Shelly said. 'Be explicit so misfits self-select out.'
Regardless of who a founder is pitching to, authenticity matters. Panelists emphasized that a founder's story isn't just about the company – it's about why they are the right person to solve a problem.
'My founder-market fit is personal. I'm building for women like me,' Shelley said. 'That authenticity carries across investors, employees, customers.'
By the end of the panel, Wright offered a final takeaway of lessons for the audience.
'Simplify your pitch, tell authentic stories, push for clear timelines,' Wright said, 'and be intentional in every conversation.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Technical.ly
a day ago
- Technical.ly
Universities are economic engines. Will they survive?
American higher education faces several intersecting challenges, including declining enrollment, reduced job prospects for graduates, demographic shifts and political funding pressures. International competition, particularly from China, is eroding the US's long-held research dominance, with experts pointing to immigration policy, lack of coordinated innovation strategy and underinvestment in science as key factors. Emerging reforms suggest paths forward for universities to adapt, re-engage with their communities and sustain their role as essential 'anchor institutions' for local economies. Victor Hwang's immigrant parents started a small business to help pay for his shot at an elite university that changed the course of his life. Brian Brackeen dropped out of a state school to start a tech career that led him to launch one of the country's few Black-led venture capital firms. Both represent how American higher education has changed over the last 50 years. Each can tell us something about where this country's colleges and universities might go in the future. No question it's a moment of peril. For centuries, universities have intended to do two things: create new scholarship, and train students in it. In the American style, this meant colleges and universities have been powerful economic engines, most notably through breakthrough invention. The world's first supercomputer and the mRNA research that powered the historically-fast deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine happened at the University of Pennsylvania. Johns Hopkins University researchers isolated the first human embryonic stem cells and landed the first spacecraft on an asteroid. Modern robotics and artificial intelligence were pioneered at Carnegie Mellon University. Examples like this come from across the country. Big breakthroughs are historic. More practically though, higher education commanded social currency in the United States by driving economic mobility for individuals. After the Second World War, elite universities established a merit-based admissions system. For a time, standardized tests gave kids from different backgrounds a better shot at prestigious schools. As the American economy changed, the so-called college wage premium grew. By 2012, a college-degree holder could expect nearly double the earnings of a peer with only a high school diploma. The relatively big generation of millennials stormed college campuses throughout that decade — reshaping cities along the way. The peak had already passed. College enrollment in the United States hit its zenith in 2010 and has declined since. Worse still, 2018 marked a reversal: For the first time on record, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates (those aged 22-27) was higher than the national average, and it has accelerated since the pandemic. Whether that's because of encroaching artificial intelligence or an over-supply of degree holders is for another story. The point is that existential threats are growing for US higher education. Alongside the so-called enrollment cliff, due in part to continuing demographic changes, American research universities are losing status abroad, and entangled in a political battle domestically. Where do we go from here? Hwang, founder of entrepreneurship advocacy group Right to Start, told me during a recent Builders Live podcast recording that universities are overdue for an overhaul, from their century-old curricula to how they handle innovation and research. 'The way our current university curricula are designed, they were created over a hundred years ago,' Hwang said. 'If I were running a university now, I would shift the focus toward how you apply knowledge to actually make stuff happen in the world — make people into builders, makers and doers.' Brackeen, a managing partner at Cincinnati-based venture firm Lightship Capital, agrees institutions must adapt. He advocates making higher education more flexible and accessible, reshaping the very structure of how universities deliver learning. 'This idea that you all have to start as one class and finish in a specific amount of time — why does it matter?' Brackeen said. 'Decoupling line-by-line matriculation would allow more people to participate.' American higher education is at a crossroads These shifts are not merely hypothetical. The data shows that American higher education is at a crossroads. Controversially, the Trump administration has withheld federal funding from a growing list of universities on cultural issues. University of Virginia's president resigned amid the pressure. The administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric is suppressing international students, long prized by college admissions for high tuition fees. Already cash-strapped community colleges are enacting budget cuts. Close to 100 colleges and universities are expected to close in he coming years, according to a Federal Reserve Bank analysis. Dozens have already shut down, of the close to 6,000 that exist. No question some consolidation and closures are an inevitable response to a changing landscape. Even higher ed insiders have acknowledged that colleges and universities let a liberal bias grow, leaving the trade politically vulnerable. Meanwhile, higher ed has suffered 'administrative bloat,' in which an arms race of services has propelled spiraling professional staff that do not contribute to core learning. So higher ed has problems, yes, but its importance is unrivaled. The Federal Reserve Bank's 'anchor institutions' initiative has quantified the economic impact of 'eds and meds,' or the preponderance of universities and health systems at the center of local economies. Weak regions rely on them, and strong regions are powered by them. What can be done about it? One key point from the Fed research is that colleges and universities ought not be seen as solely coastal phenomena. According to a analysis of federal data, every US state has at least one university that is among the 200 largest R&D spenders in the country, and most rank in the top 150 (South Dakota State University is a laggard). Each contributes meaningful inventions to our lives, and effective graduates to our communities. That story is lost on a growing number of Americans. University communication strategies matter. Elite schools like Harvard and Yale, with endowments in the tens of billions, attract particular criticism: that they're hedge funds with mascots hoarding resources rather than investing in broader economic growth. Competing for lower acceptance rates is an unjust — and politically tenuous — strategy for nonprofit institutions, Brackeen notes. Brackeen advocates for redistributing some of these financial resources across the higher education system, particularly to historically underfunded institutions. 'I would love to see the larger universities democratize their access to financial resources,' Brackeen said. 'Their immense war chests could provide critical support to smaller state institutions and HBCUs.' One analysis in the United Kingdom, which itself faces a high cost higher education system, advocated for a two-tier system: national institutions that should be evaluated on selective admissions and scientific breakthroughs, and local ones that should be evaluated on producing more in-demand graduates at ever lower costs. A 'lifelong-learning entitlement' is being piloted there, reflecting that though there may be fewer younger people now, a growing share of the population is older. Continuing education, both for career changing, upskilling and fulfillment, seem obvious priorities. The 'university retirement community' seems like a bet on that the international reputation of American research universities — long an undisputed advantage — is under pressure. According to Nature's latest global university rankings, only two US institutions remain in the top 10 (Harvard and MIT), while Chinese universities dominate. This marks a profound shift from two decades ago, when American institutions filled most top slots. Victor Hwang points to outdated federal immigration policies and a lack of strategic thinking about global competitiveness as partly responsible for this decline. 'We trained up the best minds in the world and sent them back home again,' Hwang said. 'We haven't fundamentally redesigned our scientific-industrial complex since World War II. We need to intentionally focus on innovation and entrepreneurial activity.' Whether the Trump administration's attacks allow that to happen, or not, remains unclear. One analysis is tracking more than $3.5 billion of federal funding to colleges and universities that is in question. But amid the gloom, signs of change are emerging, particularly from regions and institutions experiencing a renaissance. The Midwest, notably, is experimenting with solutions. Ohio, for instance, implemented the 'Ohio IP Promise,' which streamlined intellectual property rules across all state universities to accelerate innovation. Marshall University in West Virginia, under former Intuit CEO Brad Smith, now mandates design thinkin g as part of its freshman experience — a practical move to foster problem-solving and resilience in first-generation college students. These examples may offer a blueprint for broader reforms. 'There is not a vibrant ecosystem in our country that is not situated in some form or way to a university. They're vital,' Brackeen said. 'But they need to get off the sidelines and actively invest in communities again.'


Technical.ly
5 days ago
- Technical.ly
Founded by one of Pennsylvania's first Black veterinarians, this Germantown animal care center is still thriving
A Germantown animal care center founded almost 50 years ago by one of Pennsylvania's first Black veterinarians is still active in the community — thanks to dedication from its second-generation owner. Over the last eight years, Greene Street Animal Care has gone through shifts in business model and branding, but the core of the business has always been focused on making every animal and owner that comes through the door feel at home, CEO Kathleen Walls told 'Our motto is, we treat your pet like family,' Walls said. This philosophy is inspired by Walls' father, Orville R. Walls, who opened Greene Street Animal Clinic in Germantown in 1976 and provided community vet services for over 40 years. After he died in 2017, it made sense for Walls and her family to keep the business going, especially because the clinic had become a community staple in the neighborhood. 'It was, how do we maintain this animal care in our own way,' Walls said, 'yet continue the legacy that my father had set forth.' Now, the business offers things like doggy day care and monthly wellness checks from a traveling vet, but the main focus is on boarding services. The center prioritizes letting animals spend time outside their crates, with access to an enclosed dog park and the opportunity to roam around the building, Walls said. 'Normally there's three or four [pets], whether they're under the desk or behind,' she said. 'We wanted to create that same type of home away from home space for them.' Shifting the business model to meet neighborhood needs After taking over the business, the biggest challenge for Walls and her team was to figure out what their niche was. Walls, who is actually a clinical psychologist and not a veterinarian, decided to start by becoming a certified dog groomer. While the center no longer offers grooming, it helped introduce her to the world of animal care. Walls' father offered boarding services as part of his clinic, so it made sense for the business to continue that, she said. There's no shortage of pet care centers in Philadelphia, with 55 dog kennels in Philadelphia listed on and over 200 listed on Yelp. An average night of pet boarding in Philly can cost anywhere from $50 to $70 per night, according to Rover. However, Greene Street's prices are purposefully lower than average, $35 per night for dogs and $30 per night for cats, to make care more accessible for its customers, Walls said. They also had to figure out how to build their brand so they weren't only seeing business during summer break and the December holidays. The small business built on the community it already had in Germantown, a dedicated client base with most new business coming via word of mouth. But this new era of business also called for building relationships with other facilities, and getting referrals for animals that those other centers couldn't take. They also started tapping into other reasons people may need pet care, like if they experienced a medical event, traveled for work, or had an emergency and couldn't keep their pet in their home, she said. Some families have been with Greene Street since Walls' father first started his clinic, she said. 'We've had people who even have us in their wills,' Walls said. 'They're like, if anything happens to us, they know to bring our animals to you until the family comes to get them.'


Technical.ly
28-07-2025
- Technical.ly
Exit Interview: Baltimore economic development leader dives into challenges, accomplishments
Colin Tarbert has spent almost his entire two-decade career in Baltimore's public sector. Now, he's going south to Florida. Tarbert announced his departure from the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) this summer after a six-year stint as president and CEO. During that time, he oversaw the disruption of Covid, strategic changes to the BDC venture Emerging Technology Centers and redevelopment projects across the city. The new president and CEO of the BDC, Otis Rolley, began work at the end of June. He most recently served as a social impact advisor at investment company Kingdom Capital in Missouri and has held different roles in Baltimore's city government. Rolley is the first Black man to lead the BDC. Tarbert's stint in that top spot wasn't his first with the city's public-private economic development agency — he held a couple of roles between 2006 and 2010, and, like Rolley, worked directly for the city. He studied architecture at the University of Maryland and didn't plan to have a career in the public sector. But he's proud of a lot of the work he's done in Baltimore — like providing grants to businesses during Covid and collecting comprehensive data about economic development in the city. 'I was never setting out to have this career in city government,' Tarbert said, 'but [that's] the way it played out.' spoke with Tarbert about his time at the BDC and what he's looking forward to in his next role at the DownTown Investment Authority in Jacksonville. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Thinking about your most recent stint and your tenure at the BDC, is there anything specific that you're proud of accomplishing? There was so much, and a lot of it was continuation of work that had been going on in the city for a long time. This type of work, it takes a very long time to make progress. When I came to BDC, I had the opportunity to focus more on the economic development piece of it. There were a number of accomplishments that I'm really proud of — nothing that happens is singular; this all takes a lot of teamwork, both within BDC and the partners outside of BDC. One initiative that I started with, I think will continue, is the Baltimore Together initiative. That was really resetting the comprehensive economic development strategy for the city, and putting forth a vision that was new and very intentional about reaching residents and businesses and stakeholders who traditionally felt excluded from economic development — or at least perceived that they were excluded. The other big piece that happened was Covid. We were then on the front lines of the crisis, helping get businesses the grants and funding that they needed to survive. While that was certainly mentally and physically taxing, it was also rewarding, because businesses that would come up and be like, 'If we hadn't got that grant from BDC, we would have been out of business,' or, 'We would have lost [the] house,' or what have you. Let's talk more about Covid. How did it shape or change BDC's strategy? What was interesting was we started the Baltimore Together strategic plan a few months before Covid hit. We just finished a very intense round of stakeholder engagement at the end of 2019. That had already started to take form. It was focused on minorities, small businesses, businesses and disinvested neighbors, etc. So when Covid hit, we already had that lens to look through. Which was super helpful, because we, as a collective team at BDC, were able to have enough of a pause when Covid hit to think through how we were going to distribute the grants. Virtually [all] other cities, jurisdictions, the state, did all of their grants — for the most part — on a first-come, first-served basis. We did not. We did it on a need basis, which was 10 times the amount of work, I can tell you, because we went through and evaluated each application. But what it did was, it allowed us to distribute the dollars to the businesses who did not receive a lot of the other funding that was first-come, first-served. What it showed was the vast majority of our grantees had not received other funding. So those people and those businesses would've been out of business, or much more disproportionately impacted by Covid, if we hadn't taken that approach. How did specific challenges change how you led the BDC? There were two big challenges as a CEO during that time. Part of it was Covid, and trying to hold together a team virtually. Because it was a prolonged public health crisis, we were hiring people that I had never met in person, right? That was kind of an odd situation. I was in the office most of the time, because I was hands-on, and I like working in the office, but it's hard to build those rapport relationships with people that you've never met online. The other piece of it that was a big challenge, from a leadership standpoint, that was compounded by Covid, was the George Floyd situation and the racial, national discussion that was happening at the same time. Especially for a white male leader at an organization that's very diverse, in a city that's majority African American, it was just a very intense time. To try to have those conversations virtually was not easy, I would say. I'd say leaving BDC, I think I left it much better than it was. Certainly, during the Covid period, because we were able to come together and work in person, which I think had a lot of benefits to it. Emerging Technology Centers, or ETC, went through several changes under your leadership. Looking back, how did you manage the transitions? I'm really excited about the direction that ETC is headed under Dr. Arti Santhanam. I think she definitely understands the opportunity, and she's done a great job laying the foundation for the new ETC, maybe 4.0, at this point. It was a 10-year lease [at ETC's Haven Street offices, its third locale ] that was coming to an end. And at the same time, the executive director was retiring, and there were some folks that had left ETC, during the pandemic and working remotely. [ Note: Tarbert's version of events was disputed in prior reporting by Deb Tillet, ETC's then-outgoing executive director, who said at the time that she was asked to retire.] We made the decision to engage with the consulting firm HR&A Advisors. We did a really extensive strategic plan, because also during that whole period of time, UpSurge had come on the scene, and so they were doing a lot of work that ETC had traditionally done. We didn't want to duplicate efforts. We wanted to be additive to the — I'll use the word 'ecosystem.' We did a whole strategic plan, and the decision was made that we should really step back. We don't need to do [a] coworking space, because nobody needed any more office space. While ETC always had business coaches and accountants and lawyers who would do pro bono services, it didn't have a much higher level of that. So now, it's bringing in funding, and the idea is for Arti to build an investment fund that would also invest in the company and give ETC a more hands-on approach to management, which we hadn't done in the past — and which TEDCO is set up not to do purposefully. The idea here is for ETC to focus on just a handful of companies within the life science spaces, to try to get them to the next level. We're going to go very narrow and deep, as opposed to the previous ETC, which was much wider, but not as used in terms of services. I see UpSurge doing that work already. That's the vision for ETC. I think it's working. What do you think BDC is better at now than when you started? There's a lot of talent at BDC, and building that team was [an] accomplishment. It's harder to see it from the outside, but inside, I think we built a lot of skills and leadership beyond just the C-suite. The blessing and the curse of being CEO is you get the recognition or the blame for things that you might not have anything to do with. In this case, it was very, very positive. The team had been working for a long time on commercial corridors, and that was actually through Covid, and through a lot of the GIS testing that we were doing for grants. From that, come up with different strategies for each commercial corridor on what struggles they might be having, whether it's a certain type of retail that they're missing, or a certain building type that seems to be problematic. That was an example of how the teams came up with their own ideas and solutions and implemented them without a top-down approach. I think a lot of that came from my leadership style. What are you looking forward to most with your new job in Jacksonville? For about the last decade, they've been working and have had some great success redeveloping their downtown, revitalizing it, making it an attractive place to live, work, play. I was drawn to the position because, one, I really enjoy the planning and the real estate development aspect, and the opportunity to build what I hope will be a great, thriving city. I think they're already on their way to doing that without a lot of recent successes. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Baltimore and what we've accomplished here along the waterfront development. For me, I just saw the opportunity, and they were really interested in having an outside perspective, which isn't always the case. I think it was a perfect match, in a lot of ways, for the work that I've done here, with their interest in where they want to take the city, and especially their downtown. I think there's going to be a lot happening in Jacksonville, and just excited to play a part of it.