How to come across as an intelligent founder who knows their shit?

8 ways to make a terrible impression and how to fix it

In the past month, I’ve seen about 20 live startup pitches with Q&A and interviewed 3 founders in a podcast setting. What sets apart the best from the mediocre?

The best entrepreneurs provide short, to-the-point answers. Anyone can adlib for two minutes without saying a lot, but to be concise 🥵🫠

8 ways to come across as a great founder

For example, when asked about their revenue model, the best founders

1. Don’t go full diary mode: ‘Well, 2 years ago…’; they just provide an answer first, ‘we do subscription’ and then explain the context of the answer.

2. Admit not knowing, and they jump to saying ‘We haven’t explored that in detail yet, thanks for highlighting it’, right away

3. Either understand your question immediately or ask for clarification without hesitation: ‘Did you mean our pricing or transaction model?’

4. Know that evidence beats reasoning, so they frontload saying ‘we have tested this with 10 customers and 8 renewed’, and then say why they believe it works like that.
   

5. Distract for not having an answer by using fluffy words such as ‘impact’ or ‘revolutionise’, or ‘Our mission is to blabla’

6. Don’t get defensive when asked critical questions—repeating claims we already understood doesn’t help.

7. Are okay to admit they are wrong when presented with evidence— ‘I stand corrected, we based our estimate on this, but this seems more accurate, thanks’

8. Just answer the fucking question.

Are there any other credible, intelligent founder traits I’m missing? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks to Rens & Manuel for supplying traits 6 & 7!

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