5 days ago
‘Be yourself:' VCs want founders to tell authentic and urgent stories
There's no such thing as a perfect pitch — but there is such a thing as a forgettable one.
At the 2025 Builders Conference, three venture capitalists with varied investment backgrounds joined a refreshingly unstructured conversation about what makes a founder's story resonate.
Moderated by Ken Malone of Baltimore-based Early Charm, the 'VC Roundtables: Telling Your Story to Investors' panel featured Ryan Bednar of Orange Collective, Rob Brown of MVP Capital and Anthony George of Ben Franklin Technology Partners (BFTP).
Despite their varied areas of expertise and interest, the three Philly-based investors largely agreed that founders need to lean into their own unique qualities when telling their stories to potential investors. Bednar, a founder and Y Combinator alum whose firm specializes in other graduates of the prestigious accelerator, framed it as giving the funder a sense of being in on something exciting.
'I think the best pitches,' Bednar said, 'are where you're kind of letting the investor in on a secret.'
That secret isn't always about the product. In fact, as much as the panelists all believed in the value of a founder's passion, one of them cautioned against being too focused on those products or solutions, instead of the problem that birthed those products.
'Your solution should always be changing, your product should always be changing,' said George. 'But if you're obsessed with the problem, you're going to stick with it even when things get difficult.'
Relationships over transactions, no matter the personality
While the Elon Musks and Travis Kalanicks of the world might suggest that the most outgoing entrepreneurs are the most successful, several panelists said that it's entirely possible to build the right connection with a VC without that kind of personality.
'I think you can totally build relationships with VCs and investors as an introvert,' said Bednar, adding that he found success in online networking and email outreach when he was a founder.
Brown said that the depth of a relationship matters more than how much a founder puts themself out there.
'You don't necessarily have to be a conference junkie,' he said. 'You can find one-on-one ways to interact. It also goes back to the idea of time: I find that I have introverted tendencies myself, and I find that over time, the more time you spend with someone, the more extroverted you become with that specific individual.'
That said, the panelists also believed in the worth of a pitch that can hook someone in on the first interaction.
'The last half-a-dozen deals we've done, almost all of those were where the pitch didn't happen over Zoom or on Powerpoint,' Brown explained. 'The pitch happened in person, talking to them, meeting them for the first time. That was the real pitch.'
For bootstrapping founders — especially those building in hard tech or from cities outside the usual VC hotspots — the advice was practical. Conserve cash. Do your research. Find the right kind of capital for your business model. And don't assume geography is a limitation.
'You can also build relationships out in Silicon Valley,' Bednar said. 'I don't think you should limit yourself to a particular geographic area.'
What (not) to do
Building relationships that lead to investment may not be a perfect science, but the investors still had actionable tips for what every founder can do (and should avoid) when seeking venture capital.
While entrepreneurs often conflate story with pitch, panelists drew a line between the two. The story is personal, emotional and evolving. A pitch is structured, strategic and designed to answer key questions like who you are, what you're doing and why.
But one needn't be fully separate from the other, and the panelists also shared tactical advice for making that story stick. For instance, George of BFTP suggested founders create a 90-second pitch video to share with funders, especially if they can't meet a VC firm's principal immediately and need to give something representative to that firm's associate or analyst. That video could incorporate the story, which must be unique to the founder's particular journey.
Either way, 'don't copy it out of a book,' he warned.
Asked about the 'wrong' way to build investor relationships, panelists agreed: pushiness and rigidity are quick turnoffs. A founder who can't pivot raises red flags.
The speakers also advised against flooding pitch meetings with more than one team member and pitching ideas that don't fit an investor's stated interests.
'We are a bit generalist,' he said. 'But when I say, like, 'Listen, we don't do life sciences' … they typically get the message.'
George also said that founders too often skip a critical piece of their story: not just why they're building a company, but why now. Context matters, he said, because timing — from technological readiness to macroeconomic tailwinds — can make or break an investment.
Through all of these themes and the many audience questions that guided the discussion, the investors revolved around one primary consideration: authenticity.
'This sounds trite, but be yourself,' Brown said. 'If the end result of this is … potentially a 10-year-long relationship, you can't fake it for 10 years.'
