Share your obsession
Why authentic stories win
Took 500 founder pitches last year. The ones that burned into my mind? Not the perfect decks. Not the PhDs. The stories I couldn't stop thinking about.
Everyone opens with "Our TAM is $50B" and perfect market maps. But greatness doesn't come from following templates. One founder walked in with no deck. Scrawled three trillion-dollar companies on a whiteboard. Spent the next hour painting a path to take them on in 2025. He wasn't pitching a company—he was sharing an obsession nobody else could have.
VCs spend their days hunting outliers. What separates the extraordinary isn't better metrics or credentials. It's stories nobody else can tell. The best founders move seamlessly between painting trillion-dollar visions and describing the exact steps to get there. You can't fake authentic obsession. You can't template unique conviction.
Stories create the frame. Logic fills in the colors. The greatest founders don't just build differently—they see differently. Their stories feel inevitable because they couldn't have happened to anyone else.
Most founders study the past to predict the future. The extraordinary ones already live there. They don't sell you on their vision—they make you see what they can't unsee.
Data impresses, but stories persuade. The best founders don’t just present a vision, they make you feel its inevitability. The startup graveyard is filled with founders who had "perfect" decks and flawless credentials.
This hits hard, Nikunj. The best pitches aren't performances, they're someone showing you the world they can't stop thinking about.