Creating Impactful Pitch Decks with Dorothy Fulop

Hello, hello everyone. I hope you are having an awesome day. My name is Daniel. I'm a part of the FI marketing team. Apologies for the delay in beginning the event, but you know, sometimes tech isn't as friendly as it should be. But anyhow, we are now going to kick things off. So if you're here for the first time, Founder Institute is the world's best place to turn ideas into fundable startups and fundable startups into global businesses. And I'm personally really excited about this event that we have today because it's an event that's going to be focused on pitching. And the really cool thing about pitching is that, you know, there's this very standard template for everything that you need to have in a pitch deck. But what really makes the difference is that tiny bit of nuance, right? And what's really exciting is today's speaker, Dorothy, who's the founder of Pitch Cab, and she's somebody who helps founders really create engaging pitches. Really, really knows how to, you know, create an engaging pitch. So it should be super, super exciting. Uh, without a further delay, what we'll do is we'll bring Dorothy on stage, and as Dorothy joins us on stage, just to kind of go through some ground rules, ground rules here, folks. Hey, Dorothy!

Hey!

Hey! So yeah, Dorothy, what I'll do is I'll just kind of introduce some of the rules and some of the tech here so that we can begin. So folks, as you can see, there is a Q&A button right under the chat button to your right. So if you have a question for Dorothy, what you have to do is click the Q&A button, pop in your question there, and at the end of Dorothy's presentation, what I'll do is I'll come back on stage with Dorothy and we'll run through your questions, right? And once the event is over, we do have a networking portion. So please do stick around for that. We have tons of founders, aspiring founders from across the world Hopefully Dorothy has some time to join us as well. People from the FI team will be there as well. So it should be a great time. And one last thing before I get out of your hair. If you look right at the bottom of your screen, you guys should be able to see a reaction button. So if you're enjoying what Dorothy is saying, if you're enjoying the event, do show her some love. We already have it. There we go. Dorothy, I'll get out of your hair now. You can share your screen and I'll see you in the Q&A.

Okay, let's do this. Tech wasn't that kind to us a few seconds ago, so let's hope it works out this time. Okay, sharing a screen. So exciting. Okay, okay, just please give me a thumbs up if you see my screen. Oh, so many thumbs up.

Thank you so much.

Okay, another trick. Do you see when I do this? Did it change? Okay, let's hope so. Okay, awesome, guys. Thank you so much. I'm going to start. Let me know if there's a glitch, just cut me off because I think, I don't think if I'm on full screen that I can see the feedback. But let's do this. So welcome everyone to this workshop where I'm going to show you the pitch deck toolbox. Toolbox. I'm going to open it up for you and we're going to learn how to influence your audience. Hopefully by the end, you will learn that these tools are very useful in other areas too, and that you can do something much better than just influencing your audience. So let's look at today's structure very quickly. After a short info, I will explain a new approach to creating captivating pitch decks. We will look at 3 tools in detail, and after that, I will show you the different areas where this tool can be very useful for startups. And for those who make it to the end, I also have a little gift prepared, but Before we begin, let me just introduce myself and how I came to the pitch deck world. My name is Dorothy, and I'm, I'm the founder of a branding and marketing agency called Pitchcamp. And at Pitchcamp, we work with startups and we begin our journeys together with the very first pitch. Usually I'm the one creating the pitch decks and not delivering them, so forgive me, I'm a little bit nervous today. Also, I heard how many of you signed up, so that didn't But I'm also very, very thankful for you guys. You made me so welcome, especially because I'm an outsider in the startup world. My background and my natural habitat is the messy and beautiful creative agency world where instead of pitch decks, Super Bowl ads are created. You guys know the really high-pressure creative work where You have seconds to capture the viewers' audience, your audience's attention. And every one of those seconds costs millions of dollars. Well, now that I say it out loud, these two worlds, the creative agency world and pitching for fundraising, those two worlds are not that different. Um, if we look at the numbers. Since investors look at pitch decks for less than 2.5 minutes, which is insane. And their typical clients raise between $1 and $3 million with their pitch decks. If you compare those numbers, well, they're not that far away, but the approach from Super Bowl ads and pitch decks, well, that's very different. While great commercials are funny, and surprising. They tell a great and thought-provoking story, and if nothing else, they make you want to learn more. In pitches, we see a lot of decks like this one here. Okay, let's, let's see everything what's wrong here. Design, or I would say the lack of it. Way too much text. I'm not even going to address the font selection here, stock photos that are really meaningless and fake, hockey stick forecast. That's a huge one. It's basically all these useless stuff that people think that they have to put on a slide in a pitch deck. And my main problem with these, even putting my designer eyes on this side, is that There's nothing to get excited about these pitches. So sadly, these mistakes, they're minor mistakes, but they add up and they might make the best ideas or investment opportunities fly under the radar. So just please don't do these. Okay. Here's a very quick poppy palate cleanser for you after that design disaster. And also, also, I'm gonna start with a crucial heads up for you. The magical branding tools that I'm gonna show you today, um, they can't mask a company's underlying issues, but the whole process, how we create those pitch decks, they often identify these underlying problems before the investor sees it. And you'll end up on the end, not only with a better pitch deck, but a better company. And I think that's huge. And that's why I love creating pitch decks and pitches. So today here are my 3 favorite branding tools employed by the best branding agencies. Conveniently, they all start with a letter C. So the first one is captivation. To captivate your audience's attention, we're going to use some primal instincts. Back in the day, spotting the difference meant survival. So if something was different than its surroundings, it was either a potential threat or a delicious opportunity. Today, no, we don't have those kinds of dangers, but your company's differentiation taps into that same primal instinct. So from a sea of similar pitch decks, An investor will pay attention to the one that's different, and captivating your investor's attention is a crucial first step in the whole pitching process. So, captivation. The reason why this is so important is that every year, from 3,000 submitted pitch decks, only 500 make it to the detailed review round. That means that if investors look at approximately 10 pitches a day, uh, I understand why they just ignore 86% of them. It's just way too much information to withhold, and most of the pitch decks just look the same. So when you rely on a presentation template, it's a great start, but if you just stop there, keep in mind that a savvy investor probably already have seen it. They maybe are not design experts. They don't pick apart the fonts and colors, but subconsciously their interest might dwindle because they have the feeling that, oh, I saw this already. So catching your investors off guard with your refreshingly unique brand will captivate their attention. So start building your brand before you start pitching it. Um, okay. We already used our primal instinct for captivation. I hope it makes sense that how crucial it is to starting the process, but let's make it a little bit even stronger by adding something from the modern world to the mix. Convenience. And by that, I mean the most convenient format to read or to listen to a pitch. If the format is convenient for your audience, we won't lose that hard-earned captured attention. And I don't know how obvious it is, um, even at the number of pitches that I see, um, I think it's like above 3 pitches, you just They just all mush together in this huge blob. And it's very, very hard to remember. And every single opportunity where we can make it more convenient for the listener to keep up their hard-earned attention, we're in it to win it. So at Pitchcamp, that's the reason why we create 3 very different types of documents for our clients. Each of these three are tailored for three distinct pitching scenarios. These three scenarios, um, cover three very different conversations, and these conversations vary significantly. If you switch up the format, these conversations could be a little bit weird or awkward, and the whole process can be counterproductive. So let's look at them one by one. I'm going to tell you the format and how you can benefit fit and use, use them the best way possible. So let's look at them one by one. Let's start with the one-pager. A lot of you heard of it, a lot of you use it, and it's an amazing document type that we suggest to use when you have either— if an investor is asking for it, or if you have a one-on-one meeting with an investor. If you have one of those meetings and you kick it, kick it off with a rehearsed presentation on slides, that's just really awkward. Just picture both of you like sitting too close, your knees touching, and you're looking at the same screen. You try to switch on PowerPoint presentation mode, which can be a pain. So instead of that whole disaster, we just opt for a more professional and more natural approach, we compare— we just prepare this concise one-page document. This is the high-level summary of your business. It addresses crucial questions and showcases key numbers. And your job is only to be there and have a nice, normal conversation with another human being. The document will do its job by holding all the information. So that's for a one-on-one meeting, the one-pager. Let's move on to the next format, which is when you're pitching on Zoom or in front, front of a larger audience. The format that you're experiencing and hopefully loving right now is the most effective. In this format, I'm having a conversation with you and the slides that you hopefully can see are here to jazz up my talk or just illustrate things more swiftly. Than words can. This format— and this is where most startups use a different kind of pitch deck— this format, if you noticed, is very image-heavy and text-poor for a good reason. Your eyes are the primary source of information. So if you can read something, you will automatically start reading it and stop listening. And since in these presentation, presentation or pitching types, you are the one providing most of the information. If people don't listen to you, but they read your slides, you will just lose their attention. So by now we know that we don't want to do that. So if you're presenting, use the file that you're, that you're sharing as just this extra little nice to have, but everything that you want to say, you should say it. Okay. This is, I'm spending a little bit more time on this one because this is where I see most problems because you have the one type of deck with all the text and it's very, very hard to pay attention to the information on the slides and to listen to you too. And if you're doing it at the same time, the audience won't do either listening or reading, so you will just lose them. Yeah, that's why we keep this format image-heavy, image-heavy and text-poor. Okay, that was a mouthful. Let's move on to the third type, which is the send-out deck. So that's closer to what some, some might use as the presentation deck. But the big difference is that in a send-out deck, you can't be there to capture your audience's attention. A send-out deck has to stand on its own feet, not just stand, but stand out in a crowded mailbox. So now your subject and your email copy become part of your pitch. And your goal here is that people open your email, they open the attached file, they click it, and if it's a link, they visit the link and then not only scroll through the deck, but truly, truly engage with it. So this is quite a challenge. And if you are not just sending a simple email with an attachment, but you create this investor experience, an experience that's fun, interactive, informative, and that kind of, uh, experience design is my personal favorite, especially because the audience that's used to boring messages and just attached files, Well, they will appreciate it tremendously. This approach doesn't just grab the attention, it ignites something more meaningful, which is luckily our second tool today. It's connection. So after captivation, let's move on to the second tool today. Starts also with a C, connection. When it comes to your relationship with investors, it's all about connecting with them. Remember, they are people too, even these two guys. And people, well, people love stories. And this is why our main job at Pitchcamp is to write these stories. So here are some examples. From some of the pitches that we created and the stories we told. I hope you guys will love them as much as we loved creating them. So there was this client, um, a Latinx media company. They had the opportunity to sell ads seen by 61 million people, which is huge. But interestingly, that story never worked for them. So we created a story about a kid and his childhood heroes and how different that is for a Latino kid. And this story, it was, it was truly one of my favorite pitches. Um, and I was lucky enough to be there at the pitch event and to see that investors started to care deeply about this company. Even before the pitch was over was my favorite, favorite moment in my career. Uh, yeah, that, that's the power of a story. Okay. The next one is when we turn a mortgage app into a story about excitement, interior design, and a conversation between a couple. The two founders did an amazing job telling the story and painting a vivid picture of their users and the burning problems that they might have and how their app can solve the problem. That was way better and way easier to relate to than just mentioning it on the problem slide. And finally, the creating connection tool was used to turn a pretty dry B2B text messaging service into a fun story of a hot summer afternoon. A canceled swim practice, and a kid throwing a tantrum. So these are some stories that we loved, and you probably can tell that I'm very excited about the topic. Storytelling and pitch decks and brand communication could be its own workshop. Just let us know if you want something like that in the future, but It's fascinating. And if you want to learn more, here are some fantastic books on the subject. So pick one that resonates with you the most or take a screenshot of this. But yeah, just read one before your next pitch. Okay. If you take away just one story example today, Let it be this one. Imagine that you're introducing a brand new device. Would you kick off by listing its features? Hard drive, which is really awesome, has all the gigs, um, the cable, the battery that lasts hours long, and the headphones that are clear and amazing sound, have amazing sound. Um, yeah, these features are crucial, really cool. But crafting a compelling story around them can transform this introduction into something simple and beautiful as this one here. I know some of you remember this. Thousand song— oops, sorry. Thousand songs in your pocket is a mini story, not a list of features. It's not a complicated and detailed introduction. Just a story, because people remember stories, people love stories, and people get really excited about stories. And excitement is the key because the brain absorbs information more efficiently in an excited state. And our goal with pitching is to deliver information the right way. So get your audience excited. My favorite quote about creating connection comes from the presentation goddess of Silicon Valley, Nancy Duarte. People don't fall asleep during conversations, but they do during presentations, especially the ones I saw in the chat. Some of you are up at 2 AM in the morning. Yeah, well, this is a challenge, and I can tell you that there's nothing more demoralizing than seeing a snoring VC on a high-stakes pitch event, head tilted back, mouth wide open. My heart broke for the presenter, but you know what? He wasn't talking to us. He didn't establish a connection. And for some people in the audience, snoozing was a better option that day. I took a screenshot. So message me if you want it as a reminder. That you never make that mistake in your pitches ever again. You don't present, you have a conversation with your audience. Okay, we already covered 2 Cs, and your audience is hopefully by now excited and engaged. Your chances are already way better than before. They are ready for what you want to say, but how you provide this information still matters. Based on all of that, can you guess the third C? I can see your answers, but I'm going to guide you there. Have you ever explained what you do and only received some nodding and polite, oh, okay, that's cool. Well, if it happens during a pitch, That's fatal. So let's work on that. And the third C will help us, which is clarity. It's the trickiest of them all and ironically the most confusing one. So let's just dive deeper why this— when you're trying to speak clearly, it's probably the only time When your experience and intelligence work against you. After spending years on your idea or startup, it's just impossible to see it with fresh eyes and from the outside. Yet your investors and customers will hear the concept for the first time. Nothing is self-explanatory. Everything is new for them. So try to go back in time and begin from the basics. Use everyday analogies and examples, but please avoid claiming that you're the uber of something. Even if it's true, there's, there's better stories that we can tell by now. So if the experience wasn't a problem, your brain is still there. You know the jargon, all the 3-letter abbreviations, and almost everything is super self-explanatory and simple. Again, for you. To make things worse, your brain is surrounded by similar brains and your clarity feedback is flawed from the very beginning. If you ever seen the best documentary, ever made on startup life, you will probably remember the scene where they realized that they only tested their product among peers and the only outsider hated it because she didn't get it. Well, that's precisely how your pitch works. This curse of knowledge and your advantage in time can be both cured by this simple thing called info layers. It's a very easy concept. You just start with a hook, just like I did. I called this concept that I'm gonna introduce to you info layers. I gave it a name. It's quite simple. You can probably guess that it will have to do with information and layering, but it's not too complicated. Everyone gets it and we can move on and Expand it a little bit, expand it like a dropdown menu, one layer at a time. I only provide the next level of information. You never overwhelm your audience. And this one is, I'm warning you, this one is really hard to create for yourself. And you will feel a very strong pushback because the fear of sounding not professional and smart enough. Is huge here. So we're gonna use some radical exercises here to combat that. Enter the grandma pitch. It's an amazing tool. You just have to talk to your favorite senior citizen and explain to them what your company does. I know it's nerve-wracking. It's really, really hard, but if you succeed, you will know the simplest way to talk about your company, and the tired VC will always appreciate this simplicity. Okay. So clarity in your communication can be used in many ways. I'm going to show you 3 different ones here that are very useful in your pitch text. Let's start with your slides. When you look at a single slide's layout, the information hierarchy that you create with this clarity in mind should guide you through it. It should be clear that you— what you read in which order and what is the most important part, especially when you're not there. Remember the send out deck? Yeah, so effective Clear design is capable of achieving this, but bad information hierarchy can mess up the whole slide. When it comes to the structure of your pitch deck, the same principles will help you building up the information for your audience piece by piece. It's all about taking your audience on a journey and making sure they never feel lost. Look at this slide, for example, it has no other function than help you follow my speech. You know that we are talking about information clarity in your pitch text structure, and we're very likely are going to move on to something that has to do with clarity and structure in the fundraising process. So now that everyone hopefully doesn't feel lost, let's just move on to that, your fundraising process. When it comes to fundraising, the same information layering principles hold true. You don't delve into very specific, overwhelming details in your first interaction, but you are ready to provide every detail when an investor requests it. Keeping them hungry and providing clear information when they are ready or when they ask for it. Is the key to success and of course, an investment. Okay. So here we are. We covered all three of them, captivation, connection, and clarity. These are some of my favorite tools from this huge rattling tool chest called branding. Let's talk about branding a little bit because it's often misunderstood yet very, very useful. For startup founders. Branding is not just about colors, tone, or a fluffy mission statement. Branding is the force that ignites excitement for ideas. Here's this famous and catchy definition that you might have heard before, but when it comes to branding and its definition, I like to quote the guy who actually wrote the dictionary of branding, Marty Neumeier. According to him, a brand is a person's gut feeling about the product, service, or organization. Thanks, Marty. What do we do with that? Gut feeling, really? Well, don't worry, it will all make sense in a minute. Branding is capable of amazing things, It can attract the right customers, it can boost revenue, and it can build a loyal following. A following that's eager to camp out in front of your store or even tattoo your logo on themselves. It's crazy, isn't it? You might think that branding is only for huge companies like Apple and Harley, or that startups don't have that kind of marketing budget. Or that there are more important and urgent things like product market fit or traction, but you could not be more wrong. And here's why. Unlike established companies with recognized brands, startups often blend into the background noise if they don't have a strong voice. And with great branding comes a strong voice. With a stronger brand, fewer hits are required to make a lasting impression, ultimately optimizing a startup's lean marketing budget. And finally, well, yeah, all the feelings. Startups tend to have bigger competitors with more resources, employees, and brand awareness. And these competitors can easily beat startups. If only rational factors are considered. Well, luckily 95% of customer purchasing decisions are subconscious. 95%. That's again, incredible. So instead of logic, these decisions are based on your branding and how the customers feel about your company. This is where that intangible gut feeling can put you in the top 5%. Okay. So finally, to recap everything quickly, the 3 branding tools that you can start using right now in your pitches are captivation with the power of differentiation and picking the right format, connection enforced through storytelling and conversations. And clarity with structuring information and simplifying it to the extreme. Finally, we talked about the power of feelings and the real meaning of branding and how it could elevate the startup to one of the most beloved brands. If you want help creating a pitch deck that gets you started on this journey and you're ready to build an iconic brand, just scan the QR code, or we will have the information also in the chat, and contact us. We're happy to help you. Um, with that, I'm opening up the room for the Q&A section and all the questions you might have. Thank you so much.

There you have it, folks. Thank you so much, Dorothy, for this incredibly, incredibly insightful and fun presentation. I loved all the examples that you gave, and as you can see, you're receiving a ton of love from all the wonderful people we have on today.

Wow, this is— this is a lot to take in. Thank you, guys. Thank you, thank you. Um, I hope you, you saw the value in it, and if you have any questions, just let me know. I'm here and happy to help you.

Awesome. So what we do have is a couple of questions in our Q&A section. What I'll do is I'll kind of bring them on stage one by one, and if you could maybe answer a few of them before we go into our networking. So this is a really popular question, and we kind of get this on a lot of our pitching events. Uh, this is from Jethro. For a startup that is yet to earn, looking for pre-seed investors, what should the traction slide focus on?

Okay, there's actually this amazing resource from Founder Institute, the definition of traction depending on your stage. Um, I don't know if you guys can put that in the chat. I think that's, that's the best tool that I always refer to because traction can look very differently. I have it in front of me, so I can, if I can post a screen grab, then I will share a link to our pitching page.

Okay, actually, if you could maybe drop the, you know, the resource that we created for pitching on into the chat, that would be super helpful. And just to kind of add to what Dorothy said, right, pitching again, sorry, traction, it It looks very different according to the stage you're at, the metrics that really matter to you as a startup. Maybe for you it's more important as a pre-seed startup to have, you know, the first 10,000 customers. Maybe that's traction for you, right? Maybe it's not, you know, maybe it's not annual recurring revenue. So that kind of also depends on the industry that you're at, right? If you're a B2B, business, that would look very, very different if you were, you know, a B2C business. Yeah, so yeah, thank you for shouting out our resource. So Akshay will, yeah, we'll add that to the chat. We have a couple of other questions because AI is so popular now. We had this question from Lavinya in our chat. How would you use ChatGPT for storytelling in your pitch deck? Just to add to this, if you should be using ChatGPT at all.

Designers have this debate for way longer than just AI and any tool. It's just a tool. It's a very new tool that we yet have to learn how to use. Properly. But it's a tool. So it, if you used it, and I used it mostly for checking my grammar because I'm not a native English speaker. So that's, that's really cool. But we work with copywriters for a reason. It's never as good as, as someone who knows how to tell a story I find it's very good to give you ideas. It's a great tool to get you started, but you can always tell. Even in something interesting that happened lately on, on LinkedIn, it's not pitch related, but it's ChatGPT related. Someone reached out on LinkedIn with this very personalized message. It had a lot of things that you could find out. But instantly you could feel that this was generated by AI. And I also messaged them, never got a response. So probably it was, it was too much, but you can feel, people can feel that it's, it's good copy and good copy, just as good design is, is effortless. It's very hard to notice. So yeah, it's, it's a tool and it's just a tool, and it really depends whose hand that tool is in. So it doesn't replace good copywriters or good storytellers.

Yeah, there you have it, folks. Uh, and on storytelling, we have this really interesting question, uh, that Yannick just asked: should a story focus on the founder's journey or the customer's journey?

It depends. So there are some different stories that we can tell also Yannick, just reach out to me on LinkedIn and I can send you this little chart that we created based on which kind of story is the most powerful depending on the kind of startup that you're pitching. Sometimes the founder's story is so exciting and so engaging and it serves a bigger mission than it would be just very hard to— it would be a mistake to not tell that story. Sometimes there is just, it sounded like a good idea, so we went with it. Then we definitely create a story where we highlight how the customers have this problem and how this tool can, can solve it. So again, I know you guys hate this answer, but it depends.

Yeah, and just kind of on that note, right? When you're crafting a story as, you know, somebody who's pitching, how much creative liberty should you take, right? I realize that you want to ideally have a story that's, you know, rooted in kind of truth and honesty, but there's also, you know, sometimes just so that, you know, you can captivate your audience a little more. You might want to spruce things up a little, right? What's, what's like the right amount of creative liberty here?

I think it's, if it's obvious that it's a story, then you can go as creative as you want. The only, only thing that we don't like as much is this story about my friend Sarah, who had this, it's always my friend Sarah. I don't know what it's about. All the Sarahs in the world and their problems. But if you don't go detailed enough into their story, you just claim that you know someone who has a problem, again, even if it's a real person, I don't care about them. And you can totally make up a scenario to illustrate a burning problem. So if, if a personal and true story, sometimes that's the case, if you have a story that you're comfortable sharing, and we had some of those, those are insanely powerful. But sometimes you just have to tell a story. You have to create the magic if it's, if it's not automatically there or not there for everyone to see.

No, I think that makes sense. And, um, you know, like you said, a little bit is fine, but it shouldn't be too obvious. Awesome. So moving on to the next question we have from Anna, how important is it for investors to know your domain when pitching? Will they connect if they don't know much? And just kind of, just to add to this, how do you craft your pitch deck in a way where, you know, it's an investor who doesn't necessarily understand your domain, how do you get them interested and, you know, give them all of those, you know, important details that they should know about your product and the domain that you're operating in?

I think in this case, as in many other cases, that you start a conversation right is the most important thing. So if you, if you just start talking to them and they see the person behind the pitch, That's huge. Um, when I talk to investors, which I do a lot because they're the audience that we create all of our pitches for, they always say that they want to meet the people. It's really good to have an informative and nice deck, but it's really crucial to, to know who's behind it because that's what they invest in. So yeah, that's a tricky one. But I think to start the conversation slow and to, again, this— what was also in the presentation— to take it step by step and build it up from there, I think could be even more crucial in this case.

Awesome. And I hope that was helpful. So we have a question here from Sitarum. I'm sorry if I'm saying that wrong. Uh, so the question is, what kind of market research should be going into the pitch? Uh, so I kind of want to reframe this question here. When you're helping a founder out with their pitch deck, what type of research do you kind of, um, aim to do, right? Or like, what's kind of an outline for research for a pitch deck for an investor?

Well, it depends significantly on the round that they're raising. But what, what we like to include that's not in most of the market research is like, it's not just your competitors, but what, what is your, what are your customers using that's not a competitor, but a tool that they shouldn't use that makes their life more complicated? And what is the secret competitor. So market research really, again, sorry for telling this, it really depends. Um, we try to get to every detail by asking a lot of questions because knowing your competitors is a huge part of creating your brand strategy. What I would add, which is, which is, I think, a really cool touch is that to include something that, that is not a company. Um, just an example for you guys from a bigger brand. When Netflix did their market research, one of the main competitors wasn't like HBO or how it was called back then, but they put sleep on their market, on their competitors, because people will pick Netflix over sleep many times. So we always look for these little weird details that maybe someone else doesn't think of because it shows that, of course, you have to know your competitors and it's just a lot of searching and looking. Actually, ChatGPT could be helpful there, but if you're running a startup, you know these answers. Probably in most cases what we like to add is that just that one little extra. Um, do your customers use a simple Excel sheet? Is Excel your competitor? So yeah, going a little bit deeper into the market from the customer's side is a cool tool to use.

Awesome. So I know you spoke about branding in your answer, and we have this question from Callum. On in terms of branding, what's an important skill a business owner needs to have? Let's assume that Callum is a solo founder. He doesn't have a co-founder yet. He doesn't have a, you know, he doesn't have a team. He doesn't really have the money to go to an agency. So what's that one skill to really kind of help him do great branding?

Well, Callum, you're already halfway there because asking great questions I would say that's a really important skill. Um, questioning everything and empathy. I would go, if I had to pick one, it's empathy. Because when you're trying to build, remember the last, one of the last slides, 95% of the purchasing decisions are based on, on this gut feeling that branding is all about. So if you can build something for your audience, your tribe, that they feel drawn to, then you will not only build a better company, but you're very likely gonna fit in your budget when it comes to promoting it because you don't have to push it. People will be automatically drawn to it. So empathy, knowing your customers and going into their wants and needs. Very deeply and answering their questions. I think that's, that's huge. That's, that's one of the most important skills.

Awesome. So what I want to do is I want to go to our last question because we're about to hit the hour mark and we have a hopefully a very engaging and fun networking portion ready to come right after this. So we have this question from Sheetal, and I know you mentioned you know, kind of standing out from your competitors. So the question is, what are some points to consider when pitching your business or idea when it, you know, when, if you want to differentiate yourself from your competitors, right? So what are like, let's assume that, you know, maybe you are a ride-hailing service, right? There's already Uber out there. If you live in the Middle East, there's Careem, and there's like a ton of options there. How do you kind of stand out as a startup that's in a bit of a saturated market when it comes to your pitch?

Um, that's, that's an amazing point and almost like a super segue to again talk about the connection between branding and pitching. So it's not enough that you pitch it differently. You're To stand out, you truly have to do something different. So the one thing that doesn't work is that we're Google, but we do it better. We're Uber, but we're, I don't know, we have bigger cars. Like, that's not what people, that's not how you get people excited. What you could do is, and that's again, a huge part of branding is differentiation. How are you not better or faster or anything of those? How are you different? Because when you look at huge and successful brands that were able to cut out a slice from the market, they didn't do something that already existed better. They did something significantly different.

Awesome. Thank you so much for your answer, and thank you so much for your time, folks. There you have it. Again, if you enjoyed everything that Dorothy said, show her some love. There you go, Dorothy. More emojis, more hearts, applause. Awesome. So folks, before we head out, just to kind of give you all an update, we have a very exciting event on AI happening next week. Akshay, if you could pop the link in the chat. And we have another very exciting event if you're based in the US. We have some awesome veterans and family of veterans pitching for $100K. So that is an awesome event that you can witness. Akshay will drop a link in the chat for that as well. Dorothy, before we head to the networking portion, would you want to maybe share some parting words?

Yes, I see so many questions unanswered still in the chat. So if you— I don't know how that would work better. If you just send it to me, I can, I can just reply to them. Or if you guys want to reach out to, to me on LinkedIn, I'm happy to answer the questions there. Or I'm gonna hang out in one of the breakout rooms, so you can come with your question there. I'm sorry that we didn't have more time because there are some amazing questions. So if that's possible, I can stay here and answer them. I don't know how it works, but I don't know what's—

we'll have a table for Dorothy, folks. If you want to talk to Dorothy some more, you know, ask her your questions, please do join her table. In the networking lounge. So Dorothy, again, thank you so much for taking out the time to be here. Folks, I hope you have a lovely Monday ahead. We'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye.

Thank you so much. Bye.