#543 The HEART of a Winning Pitch: VC Ben Wiener on Crafting Startup Narratives That Convert

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to any episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet today. I'm very pleased joining me. Uh, Ben Wiener he is the general partner or managing partner I should say. Ben, you [00:01:00] correct me. Um, same for say. Yeah. So, so, uh, he, he's a VC and, um, you know, but we have a topic which I think it's long time since I didn't focus on with the audience, um, which is about.

Pitching. And of course Ben, he's also an author and we're gonna talk of course, about his book and about, you know, what he talks in about the book. So it's called Fever Pitch. You can see it maybe in his background also. So, so without further ado, Ben, you know, usually I don't like to spend much time on, on introduction 'cause I believe that people can introduce themselves better than anyone else.

So, you know, the, the floor is yours. 

Ben: Thank you. Thanks Memet, for having me. Uh, I'll just introduce myself briefly and we can hopefully dive into the book, which I'm more interested in talking about than myself. Sure. Um, I describe myself as a professional venture capitalist and an unprofessional author. Um, the book that you mentioned, fever Pitch, was a labor of love.

It [00:02:00] was a sort of a side project for me and I was just overjoyed when it took off, when, when we published it, it hit number one on Amazon, like very quickly, uh, in its categories. So it's received some good, uh, attention and mo most importantly. It's had an impact among founders teaching what it's trying to teach through a fun story, which we'll talk about.

Um, I founded the venture capital fund that I manage about 12 years ago. Uh, spotting a local opportunity to invest in early stage startups. Before that, I was an entrepreneur, uh, business development executive in small and big companies. And before that, I started off my career as an attorney. But that's, you know, far in my past.

Uh, I was pretty clear. I was, it was pretty clear to me pretty quickly that I went to law school and practiced law because I wanted to learn how to do deals, but I certainly wanted to get out of legal practice and start doing those deals for myself rather than for other people. And that's more or less what happened.

So that's a brief synopsis of me and, uh, happy to dive into why I wrote the [00:03:00] book and what it's about and what it can possibly teach. Uh, tech founders. 

Mehmet: Great. And again, thank you Ben, very much, uh, for being here with me today. I know how busy things can get, especially for someone like yourself. Now, you mentioned like, you'll find anybody who wrote 

Ben: a book is more than happy to make time to talk about their book, even if they're very busy.

So I, I would, 

Mehmet: I know from, I know from myself. Yeah. Ask me about it. But, uh, you know, regarding, you know, what, what pushed you to, to write the book? So, so when I was preparing, I was reading, like you, you mentioned it's like more a business fable instead of a traditional startup, uh, advice book. So why you, you position it in this way?

Because, you know. I, I read myself a lot of of books written by VCs and sometimes we feel one of the two things that they are like, very structured. It's like you are reading an economics book sometimes, you know, I've seen like they try to, to make it kind of a storytelling, but still again, they get draw back [00:04:00] to to, to the scientific things.

So for you, what, what was, you know, the main reason to choose this path of, of writing the book? 

Ben: Um, so the short answer is it made no sense. Uh, I think it's just the way my brain works. Like I, I tell people that I basically wrote in 250 pages what I could have written in a 1000 word blog post. But it was so much more fun and interesting to, you know, position the teaching in a story that was fun.

Um, I, I think the short answer is it's just the way my brain works. I, I started to think about this framework. That was very serious and heavily researched, which we're, we're going to get into about startup pitching. And then I felt it was one of the few things that I had insight into and that I could teach.

And, um, and then this story just started to gel in my head of a founder who couldn't pitch a startup to save his life until he actually needed to pitch a startup to save his life. And basically, I wanted to read the story, and in order to read the story, I needed to write the story. So I started writing, and [00:05:00] I, I, I just, you know, to make a very long story short, I felt like a little bit of an imposter.

I, I did not think that I would ever grow up to write a full length novel, but the story started to take shape and I, I researched a lot, not just about the framework itself, but about, you know, book writing. I had written a prior novel before, so I had some practice, uh, teaching through story, and I felt that this was gonna be a good story and, and was gonna be fun to read for people, both inside startups and, and outside.

And I tried to, you know, hit a very high quality of, of writing, um, and entertainment. And then I showed it to a bunch of people in manuscript form and they loved it. Um, so that gave me further confidence that it was worth, you know, finishing. And then I think the, the cherry on top was getting Guy Kawasaki to write the Forward Guy.

Kawasaki is a, is a legend. Uh, his, his writing and his teaching has been very influential to me. I did not know him. I just cold emailed him and said, [00:06:00] I, you know, 

Mehmet: wow. 

Ben: Um, and, and I, I referenced some of his work in the book, and I, I felt that I had, you know, very humbly, uh, and I was almost scared to, to say this to him, but I felt that I had taken it further, that I had added something to his very famous framework.

And I would be deeply honored if he read it. And I wouldn't be insulted if he cursed me out and said, you know what? I, I thought I wrote like the perfect thing. Why are you trying to improve it? He's such an open-minded guy, and he's such a warm, uh, giving person. I had a feeling that he might appreciate it, and sure enough he did, and he wrote back.

We, he engaged with me and finally, pretty quickly he decided to contribute the forward to the book, which I felt, you know, was a further bit of credibility for, for the work that I had done. So, I, I, I really wasn't committed to publishing it until it came out, uh, good and, and, and, you know, made other people happy and, and, you know, that they felt that it was worthy.

And then I pressed, you know, publish and, and went forward with it. So the whole thing was kind of a reluctant [00:07:00] accident, but sometimes those are the best things in life when you kind of stumble into something and you do it out of joy and not out of obligation. I, I was never obligated to do it. Nobody forced me to do it.

I'm not trying to make money off of it. I'm, I'm very happy making a living as a venture capitalist. This was a gift back to the industry to try to teach something that I felt could be helpful to founders, uh, in a fun and engaging way. The, the other thing I'll say is it's very unusual to write. To teach business through fiction.

And, um, I had read, I had found a bunch of other authors that had tried to do it and had been successful doing it, and I told, but there aren't that many. So I, a friend of mine said to me, I, I understand you're a venture capitalist and you wrote a novel. I said, what do you mean you, you don't understand.

You're sitting, you're standing in the presence of one of the top 10 business fiction writers in the world. And my friend knows that. I don't usually speak that way. So he said, how do you, how do you know that, you know, gave me a funny look. And I said, 'cause there's only eight other bozos who write like this, so I have to be in the [00:08:00] top 10.

It, it's, it's a very unusual, narrow genre to try to teach business through stories. Some famous people have done it, like Pat Lencioni and Paul Erdman and some other people that I, and, and, and, uh, professor, uh, Ellie, uh, Goldratt, who wrote probably the most famous one called The Goal. So I, I modeled what I was doing after those like legendary people and tried to contribute another piece of work to that.

Small, but very important slice of fiction writing that's trying to teach, uh, business strategy. 

Mehmet: Absolutely. You know, like I, I've read a lot of books, uh, especially in the vc. Space. So I was, I was telling you, Ben, the closest thing, you know, which I enjoyed reading, which wasn't like, for example, kind of a book that is just giving you information, the books that tell history, right?

So, uh, but seeing it as a novel, I think this is really, um, an innovation by itself. Now, before going to the, to the framework and talking in [00:09:00] details about the framework. Now I would ask you this, and maybe you just mentioned it moment ago, so, so I'll not give the whole book teaser to the audience, but the main character called Mark.

Uh, so he's, he's, he's trying to pitch, so he's, he's going through stress, self-doubt, pressure and, and all this. Now, how many marks have you seen in, in, in real life, Ben? 

Ben: Uh, it's not just that I've seen them. I've, I've been Mark, like we've all, anybody who's tried to do something new. Uh, tends to bump into the same kind of struggles or troubles early on.

I, I've just, in the book, I kind of take mark to a, to a wild extreme, which hopefully none of us get to, but I think anybody who's tried to do something new will recognize some of the early, uh, traps or mistakes or misjudgments that he makes because they're incredibly common, um, and perfect, perfectly normal.

So where he begins is very normal. Uh, what happens to him is, is more extreme. Um, [00:10:00] so I see it, I see it a lot in my portfolio with founders that I work with. And most importantly, I, I experienced a lot of this stuff myself when I was an entrepreneur and, and even when I was starting my venture capital fund.

The, the, the conflict is you're very, as a, as an entrepreneur, you've, you've been given this gift, which is also a curse. You, you've been given this gift of like an insight or an idea that you wanna bring to the world, but it's also a curse because probably a lot of people, you know, don't realize what you realize.

Or don't see what you see. You're gonna have to try to convince people pretty quickly that you're onto something. Um, and some of us tip too far into being so in love with what we're doing or so convinced that it's right, that we kind of forget or don't pay enough attention to how we explain it to other people.

We just assume, well, they're gonna trust me. I'm, I'm a smart person. I'm, I have a lot of integrity, I have a lot of passion or whatever. They're gonna gimme the benefit of the doubt. I just need to, you know, more or less describe what I'm doing and, and I should [00:11:00] get the money or get whatever, you know, employees to join me or, or whatever.

And it doesn't work. That life doesn't work that way. So I'm just trying to give a framework to those people who are committed to doing something fantastic and making it a little bit easier for them, or increasing the odds that they can explain that what they, what they've seen, the future that they've seen.

They can explain that. More clearly to the people that they need to take action and join them, whether it's giving them money like somebody like me or a new employee to join the company or even their spouse to, to go along with them. You know, mark gets into trouble with his spouse pretty quickly because he, he hasn't done a good, good enough job of, uh, explaining to her or making it clear to her what he needs to do.

He, he himself doesn't fully understand what he needs to do. So he is, of course, he's gonna have trouble explaining that to people around him. And that's very common happens to all of us, and I'm just trying to give a pathway out to make it a little bit easier or hopefully a lot easier for people [00:12:00] to, to get out of that, those traps.

Mehmet: Cool. Now maybe audience heard me when I did the introduction, and you mentioned about the framework. It's called heart, which is an acronym. I'm pretty much, you know, curious to know, Ben, what it stands for. So what's, what's the heart framework? 

Ben: Okay. So like any good acronym, uh, I didn't start with the acronym.

I, I just started with a lot of research into why, why pitches? Um, two, really two things. Number one, why as an investor was I struggling to interpret pitches that were gi that are given to me. I, I hear hundreds, sometimes thousands of pitches in a year. Uh, most of them are not great, and it's not because the subject matter isn't good, it's just the organization of the material isn't 

Mehmet: great.

Ben: And again, I don't wanna be judgemental of founders. I, we did a, a survey in 20 20, 20 20, 1 of other VCs and investors around the world, and just unequivocally, over 82% said that on average, the pitches that they [00:13:00] receive are poorly organized, not, not poor quality. The ventures, we didn't ask them about the quality of the technology.

We asked them is the information being presented properly? And 82% said on average, it's not. So it wasn't just me. And then that sent me down a couple years of research. I, I believe I probably have researched this. Crazy topic of startup pitches and structure more than probably anybody on the planet. And that led me to a five element, uh, framework.

I wasn't looking for five. It just became clear to me that there were five pressure points in a standard pitch. Mm-hmm. And then I found that they fit nicely into an acronym that was easy to remember. So the H-E-A-R-T, the Heart of the Perfect Pitch, I thought, you know, fit pretty nicely into a way to teach it in a way that people could remember it.

And that was sort of the introduction to how I got to Five and how I got to Heart or H-E-A-R-T. So if you want, I can explain what each of the letters Yes, please. And it's very important to do them in order. And again, this is the be the [00:14:00] result of years of research and taking a lot of ideas from a lot of really smart people that have talked about these things in other contexts.

But I've kind of translated them into, again, our narrow slice of startup, uh, fundraising. So the h. Uh, stands for hypothesis or start with why? I think one of your mo more recent guests also mentioned that book, but Simon Sinek's, you know, famous book Ted Talk, one of the most important TED Talks in history.

I, I religiously, you know, adhere to his, uh, thesis of every great leader, every great company, every great revolution, every great political, uh, leader started with not what they were doing or how they were doing it, but why? If you wanna get people to change their behavior and follow you, you want to get me to change my behavior and give you money, you want to get employees to, to join your company.

You gotta start with why this company is so important. And he mentions the word belief or belief like 33 times in his TED Talk. So what I talk about is the [00:15:00] founder needs to open the pitch with not with a vision statement, not with a mission statement, but with a belief statement. Not, not what I believe about the world, what I believe, not what I believe religiously, what I believe about this market.

I believe that something is broken. Or alternatively, I believe that there's a huge opportunity that's untapped. It's one or the other. I believe something about this target market and preferably something that other people don't yet believe. Those are the best ideas where you've, the founder, has seen something in the future that other people don't yet believe, but he or she believes something needs to change in this space.

So we start off with h hypothesis, I believe, a belief statement. And that is, you know, verbally or that's in the pitch deck. That's the very, very first thing, uh, that we start with. And again, that's gonna engage the investor to, to lean in. They may or may not yet believe what you believe, but at least their brain is prompted to start to pay attention because now they see that something is at stake.

They need to make a choice about whether they believe [00:16:00] or not believe over the next 5, 10, 20 minutes or longer. They will believe what you believe, but they're at least engaged to listen to pay attention. Number two, E And, and by the way, notice when we introduce the actual thing that we're doing, it's, it's pretty late.

We're setting it up to engage the investor. What we're trying to do is mirror the way the investor's brain works and, uh, neutralize the red flags or the concerns that they have, like in order so that the neurons stay green and not red, so that they're, they're engaged, they're leaning in, and we're neutralizing the classic objections before they even as they occur or before they occur.

So number one is why, why do I even care? So we start off with YH hypothesis, I believe next e enormous stake. There's something at, there's something at stake, and it's really big because typically an investor needs to believe that there's going to be a big payout if this does work in terms of human life or suffering, or [00:17:00] dollars and cents, usually money.

But in order for a startup to be important, it and to be significant, it needs to have a big outcome. So we need to in some way describe quickly what's at stake in, in terms of quantity. There's a lot of humans affected by this. There's a lot of companies affected by this. We don't need to have like the Forester, Gartner, you know, market size.

Maybe if you do that helps, but just some indication of the size of this opportunity. Um, enormous mistakes. There's a lot at stake. Next, A but again, before we discuss what we are offering, we need to give the lay of the land and describe why things are so messed up. So the A stands for alternatives. Our grossly inadequate.

So we believe that something's messed up in this market, or there's an opportunity that's not capitalized upon. There's a lot at stake. E there's a lot at stake. A, the alternatives, the current state of play is really messed up. The alternatives are terrible. And here's a quick summary. It goes beyond competition.

Here's all the ways and methods that humans, computers, [00:18:00] companies. Deal or have addressed this issue and quickly why They're all terrible because they have, they're gonna have to be really, really bad for the world to need a new solution. If things are good enough, then unfortunately, there might not be enough of an opportunity for a startup.

And then fourth out of five is the r, and the R stands for radically differentiated solution. So it's not just that we have a better mousetrap that probably won't be good enough. We have a revolutionary, radically differentiated, game changing, paradigm shifting, just 10 x order of magnitude, different approach to the alternatives that we just mentioned.

And magically our approach does or will do everything so much better that it's just a, a step change, an order of magnitude improvement over the current state of play. That's the perfectly tied set up. And then finally, the only thing remaining in the five. Is t, [00:19:00] which is the traits and skills of the people that are on it.

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. 

Ben: So do we have the credibility and the ability? Do we have the capabilities? Do we have the requisite personas on our founding team? Or maybe it's just me, maybe I'm the founder, but I have all three personas of the person who's gonna design it, the person who's gonna build it, and the person who's gonna lead it and sell it.

I've invested in companies that were led by one person, like a single founder, but she had all three personas, like in the whole package. Usually it's two or three people. Um, because the founders themselves have, have divided those roles between them, where somebody's gonna be in charge of product somebo, somebody's gonna be the person who's the front face of the company.

Um, and somebody's gonna be in charge of, you know, building actually the, you know, the technology. Mm-hmm. But sometimes two per people are just one person. As long as the personas are there and they have the credibility, the background, or some. Claim that they're, that they're the right people for those roles.

That's the perfect pitch. Those are the five [00:20:00] elements of the perfect pitch, and that is the whole pitch. If in an elevator those are the things that I need to hear or that an investor needs to hear, and the rest is sort of gravy, the business model and the go to market strategy, those things come later.

Those are the five pressure points that I think are most critical to engage an investor to activate their brain or to neutralize the red flags in their brain and to get them to lean in and then take an interest in, in the venture. 

Mehmet: Ben, what you mentioned is, you know, when I, I speak with, uh, with a lot of investors, maybe, you know, there are a lot of common things that they will do, uh, to, to evaluate a startup, which is, you know, the, the biggest differentiation for me with, while listening to you is the first one.

Right. The why. And personally, you know, sometimes people comes to me, you know, and they ask me, Hey, like, we have this idea, we want to pitch. Uh, and you know, they put everything right, right? So they put the market size right. How [00:21:00] enormous is it? They put their differentiation. They put, you know, the team, but the why, you know, in my humble opinion, a lot of people they, they drop this.

Now the question is, do you think. And this what I, I'm not sure, like I'm asking you and like kind of a discussion with you, Ben. Yeah. Do you think, because a lot of people, they start what they start because it's a reaction rather than it's something really and deeply they want to achieve. And what comes to mind is an interview with Steve Jobs when, you know, he mentioned that people comes to him and say, Hey, we want to start a company.

And he asks them why and they tell him, yeah, because we want to become rich. Do you think this is the biggest misconception many founders they have? Or maybe there are like other things that, that affects their decision, why they start in the first place? 

Ben: So 

Mehmet: I'm, 

Ben: I'm actually gonna, I'm gonna twist that question a little bit.[00:22:00] 

Please. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna question the premise. So I, I have a lot of respect for founders. I have a lot of, uh, empathy for them. I think that on average founders, entrepreneurs are, they have this like virus. That is just incurable, that they want to change the world and they want to bring something cool to the world.

It's not about making money. I mean it is, but 'cause capitalism rewards great ideas. But, but let, let's assume that the primary motivation for our founder, she really has like a desire to change the world. So the question is a little bit different. Why doesn't she start with that? Why does she just start off the pitch always, almost always with the problem, and then immediately, you know, what her solution is and, and why, why do they skip over the belief?

Um, and I think it's, I think it's a function of two things. The number of things. Number one, I think founders, entrepreneurs assume that when they're invited to speak or even when they're bumped in, when a, when an investor bumps into an entrepreneur, the first, the what the investor always says a [00:23:00] hundred percent of the time.

If I, if, if, if, when I see one of my founders bump into an investor and I'll introduce them, I'll say hi, you know, meet Julie. And the investor will say, oh, Julie, what does your company do? What does it do? The investor never asks, what do you believe in the investor? Always ask, what do you do? And I always tell people, don't answer that question.

That's not really the question. The question that they're really asking, which they're not saying out loud, is, why should I care about this thing? And then tell me what you do. So I'm, I'm advocating like ninja, like juujitsu, like pivot. Use the question against the investor and answer it differently. When an investor asks you what you do, don't answer what you do.

That's number four out of five. First say quickly. Nice to meet you. I believe that the market for whatever waste disposal is totally messed up the, the market for mm-hmm. You know, AI driven, you know, AI design, dog food is, you know, is a whole thing that nobody believes in. Okay. That's interesting. Um, and by the way, there's [00:24:00] tons of dogs and lots of dog food.

Okay. And the alternatives are terrible. It's just old fashioned. It's been made the same way for a hundred years. And then I have a radically differentiated game changing different way of doing it. So I very quickly pivoted the investor's question from what do I do? Which is what the investor asked to setting up, here's what I believe, here's what's at stake, here's the current state of play.

It's all messed up, and now I'm gonna tell you, you know what I do. So I think the, the, the, it's a roundabout way to answer your question, but I, what I'm trying to, to help entrepreneurs do is get it, get it out of them. I think it's in them, and I think they're just being asked the wrong questions or, or more importantly, framing it in a suboptimal way.

And I'm, I'm not trying to convince founders to be manipulative or to be not truthful. Tell your true story of what you're doing, but just do it in this order and it's gonna match the way the investors' subconscious brain is working. So I give a lot of credit to founders. They're doing [00:25:00] amazing things.

They just assume that, number one, when the investor asks them what they do, they should answer what they do. They shouldn't, they should answer what they believe, what's at stake, what the kernel alternatives are, and then what they do. And number two, I think the other mistake is, I think just a, a misperception when, when a, when a founder is invited to meet with an investor, I think that founder thinks that, that she's being given the benefit of the doubt that the investor is super interested and really wants to believe them.

And unfortunately, often that's not the case. The investors are seeing hundreds of things investing in two or three, and what they're trying to do is subconsciously shoot down as quickly as possible this next opportunity so they can get to the next one that, that might have a better chance of being.

Right. It's very counterintuitive. It's very frustrating to try to say that to entrepreneurs. Investors don't like it when I talk about it that way. But actually in a recent book called The Venture Mindset, two researchers said exactly that. They say VCs, venture capitalists [00:26:00] are, are risk engineers. They're, they're risk avoidance engineers.

They're trying to, uh, find the things that don't have risk, and they're using what they call a red flag. Uh, process, which is what I, which what I'm describing, that when the investor meets an entrepreneur, they're actually trying to find the red flags as quickly as possible so they can shut that one down and move on to one.

That might be more interesting. And if you know that, if you're the entrepreneur and you know that, then the whole game is just to as quickly as possible, neutralize those red flags as or before they pop up and just structure your pitch so that the red flags never arise because you're, you're feeding the information to the investor the way their brains are asking for it, even if their mouths are asking for it way.

So even, even when the investor says, what do you do with their brain? Is really sending the signal of, or asking for is what do you believe? What's at stake? What are the current alternatives? And then tell me what you do. 

Mehmet: That makes a lot of sense, Ben. Um, now, okay, I'm [00:27:00] not here to criticize anyone. Go ahead.

Yeah, but No, but, uh, uh, how much. Uh, I would say. Uh, the voices that are there, you know, they are sometimes on social media, sometimes we see like, maybe they even, they, you know, so the thing that I always mention, and it's, I get a hypothesis for me, by the way, is that. Us as humans, we seek shortcuts all the time, right?

And when we seek shortcuts, so you know what I've seen people doing, let's say they are having a startup in the travel tech. In the travel tech, right? So what they do, they go find, okay, who's the biggest travel tech company in the past 10, 15 years? Let's say Airbnb, right? Let's see how Airbnb they pitched.

And let's use the same structure of of that pitch, right? And then they go to the, to the investors. And also I've seen [00:28:00] this happening in part of the, in some parts of the world where they take, for example, oh, like this is the Sequoia pitch, this is the Y Combinator pitch. Go and use it. And they don't teach these people, these founders who are eagerly really sometimes, as you said, doing something good.

Um, and extraordinary. So they get into the trap. Now my question to you, Ben, um, why this happens? And you know, of course the, the, the direct answer is of course they, they should go and read the book. Yeah. But I mean, I, I'm interested to know like why, why we, a lot of founders, I'm not say all the founders much, especially new ones, like first time founders, they fall into this trap, in your opinion.

Ben: Well, part, part of the, part of the problem that you just described is that we, the investors are actually, many of us are misleading them. Uh, so if you do a Google search or today, if you use chat GBT and write it, you know, type in, give [00:29:00] me like the standard template for my pitch deck, I believe you're going to get a suboptimal template for your pitch deck because there's just so much information on the web.

If you, if you do research it, uh, most of the stuff you're gonna find is going to be the same standard. You know, 10, 12, 15 questions that VCs claim that they're asking for. And what I'm saying, which is very provocative, is that even the VCs themselves are, are giving the wrong guidance to the entrepreneurs.

And that's, that sounds crazy. What I'm saying is, if you're an entrepreneur and you look up on a VC's website and they tell you, here's what I wanna see in the pitch deck, what I'm claiming Ben Wiener is claiming, that's not actually what they wanna see. Now that sounds completely insane. And before you shut off your computer, here's how I know it to be true.

'cause we, we asked them, we surveyed, like I said, we did the survey in 2020 that was very sneaky. And I did it on purpose with a bunch of other people, [00:30:00] and we pulled a significant sample of investors around the world. It was anonymized. We told them we're not, you know, you don't wanna put your name on it.

We're gonna ask you 10 or 15 questions just about pitches and pitch deck. One of the fascinating things that happened was I, we purposely snuck in a bunch of tricky questions where we asked basically the same thing, but in different ways. Like you would do, like on a, like on a, on a psychology test or one of these psychometric tests.

Mm-hmm. We built, we built a survey like that and all of the investors fell into the trap. So we ask them, for example, what is the typical outline of a pitch deck that you wanna see? And they all answer almost exactly the same way. And then we, a couple questions later, we said, okay, you're in the backseat of a, of an Uber and a founder jumps into the car and she starts talking to you and she starts telling you what we set it up as like a vignette.

And we said, she starts off with, you know, the problem, what is the next question that you have in your brain? And it was a different answer [00:31:00] than what they had answered in when we asked them what the slides on the pitch deck should be. So they themselves were saying that when in a situation, their first mental question would be different than what they said.

Two questions earlier. They expected to see in the pitch deck. So we had a bunch of signals like that, that even investors themselves don't always fully know how to articulate how their own brains work. And the reason why I claim, which is almost arrogant and crazy, the reason why I claim that I have a better insight into investors' brain than they themselves have, is because I didn't make it up.

I, I took these structures from an anthropology, sociology, screenwriting, book writing, movie writing. Like as I began to research why things were so messed up in pitch decks, I found that many other researchers and authors had found what structures work in the human brain for entertainment, for sales, for other things.

But for whatever [00:32:00] reason, nobody had mapped that structure to the narrow slice of startup founders trying to pitch money, you know, get money from investors. So I simply just took and modified. Existing mental structures that were proven and researched and validated in Hollywood and entertainment and literature and sales.

And I just put the words that applied to startup land onto that structure, and that became the HART framework. So again, it's a long way of answering your question. Sure. No worries. Investors themselves don't often know what they're looking for, and I believe that it took years of research for me to discover that what they're looking for is the same thing we're looking for.

When we watch a movie, when we watch a TV show, when we read a book, we're looking, our brains are asking for the information in a certain way. And the authors and the writers know, and the producers know how to give us that information in a certain way. I'm just saying, okay, here's the way to do it [00:33:00] in our world and it's gonna make the investors happier.

And the the bottom line is the results. Prove it. So we, we've used this framework, I've used it in my fund, we've used it outside in the portfolio. I've had other people tell me that they used it and it's like magic. They, they, they feel like, I don't wanna sound like one of these self-help gurus, but, and I don't promise guaranteed results.

I just promise that you're, if you use this framework, your same pitch is going to be upgraded from economy to business class. You're gonna feel better pitching it, and it has a better chance of landing with the investor who's listening to it. They're gonna, they're just gonna feel more engaged and they're gonna feel more joyful, like listening to you because it's mapping to the way our lizard, human brains process new information, 

Mehmet: you know, listening to you saying this man, and again, because.

When it comes to practicing, you know, the pitch itself, I tell people like, um, you know, pitch to yourself. Like, just look at [00:34:00] yourself in the mirror and pitch and, and really ask yourself are, uh, we, if, if you were an investor, we would, uh, would you invest? And, you know, applying the framework while, you know, thinking about it from a founder perspective, I think one of the things that they might figure out, some of the out, uh, sorry, the shortcomings that they might have within the way they are presenting, they're pitching what they're doing, applying this, and you know, like there's another thing.

And then, you know, doing the research, I know like you say, um, smart sounding pitch decks often fail, right? So what are like the biggest sign that a deck that might be intellectually impressive? But you say, mm, this is not investible. Like for you, what, what would be that? 

Ben: So a couple pitfalls. I mean, there's a couple pitfalls would be classic, classic mistakes or classic traps would be right.

[00:35:00] Um, jumping too quickly into the technology itself, and this is what happens to Mark early on in the book. Like, he, he's, so, he, he believes that and they truly have invented something that's, you know, radically new. And he just assumes that people are going to appreciate how amazing and complex the, the new technology that they invented is.

And he doesn't explain clearly enough why that's important for the world, or, you know, he just wants to get the credit, like, like you get a good score on a test. He's done very well academically, so he just expects, you know, he's gonna get a good mark on the test and investors will hand him a check. It doesn't work that way.

So, mistake number one is. Jumping right away into what the company does at x, Y, Z company. We've invented this whizzbang, you know, new GI, new gadget. It's incredibly powerful. It does this and this and this. But that, that's a metaphor for the metaphor I use is in those cases, the founder has shot out on the train out of the station, and the investors are still back at the station with all these lingering questions.

Like, I don't understand what a, I, I thought I saw three other companies that [00:36:00] do this last week. Or surely even if I haven't seen anything, surely there's a bunch of other smart people on this planet. 

Mehmet: Mm-hmm. You know, what else 

Ben: are they doing to deal with this? So I think a lot of, uh, a sim one trap is skipping the alternatives and going straight to the solution.

Mm-hmm. I think that's one of the more provocative things that I'm recommending. So, for example, in my pitch deck, uh, and, and, and I've published some free information on this too, one of the things people notice is that in my suggested 10 slide pitch deck, there's no competition slide. That's crazy. That like, it's very provocative, but when you look at it, you realize, no, that's in slide number two.

'cause in slide number two. All the way at the beginning of the pitch deck, we, we set out slide number one is the problem. Slide number two is a new slide. Number two, which is current alternatives are grossly inadequate. And, and that's the A of the H-E-A-R-T that comes before the R of the radically differentiated solution.

We first need an intermediate set up of not just competition, but beyond including competition, but also indirect competition. All the different ways that people [00:37:00] have tried or are trying to solve this problem. It moves the competition discussion all the way up to the beginning, which is very radical.

It's very provocative. A lot of investors would think that was crazy, but, but we pulled them and that's exactly how their brains are working. That's exactly what they wanna know. And that's one of the pitfalls of a pitch deck when the pitch deck just shoots off and starts talking about the unbelievable new technology and the product and everything.

But it hasn't discussed what the current alternatives are, and that's left to a competition slide that's buried deep in the back of the deck. Unfortunately, the investors, as they're processing those slides of all the cool things that the new technology does, one of the major things that's buzzing in their heads is, wait a second, but how, if it's such a big deal, like, why, what are all the different ways that people are dealing with this today?

Mm-hmm. Or didn't I see three other companies that raised money on this in, in TechCrunch, like last week? So we really need to neutralize that stuff before we present what we do. That's pitfall number one. Pitfall number two [00:38:00] is just using two abstract language, like, like a, a degree, like a derivative away from the actual factual description of the product.

So, um, abstract language is thing. This is hard or it's too complex. It, you know, AI coding is too complex. We simplify it that that is not a meaningful claim because it's too abstract. If you say if inference and training costs, chat GT cost open ai. $4 billion last year and represents 90% of the cost of compute that everyone's talking about.

With our new method of using this wacky doodle math that we can do using algorithms, we can reduce the cost of inference and compute by as much as 80%, which would save a individual company like OpenAI next year, eight to $10 billion. Wow. That is not abstract. That is very specific. And I just basically said the same thing.

Things are too complex. We make them cheaper. [00:39:00] No, no. I just gave details or factual basis for the same claim. It's much more meaningful. So I think those are the two major, two of the major pitfalls that I see a lot that need tightening or, or work. Um, the framework that I advocate helps to fix some of that.

Um, and the rest of it is up to the entrepreneur to, to just be focused on and be clearer with what they're trying to say. 

Mehmet: Cool, because you, we, we, we talked about, you know, part of what happened to Mark in, in, in the book, you know, and the psychological aspects. So no, one thing that usually happens is when fair enough, you know, investors, they have the right to question, they have the right to stop maybe the founder or the founders, uh, when they say something, which might not be, and we see people here sometimes go defensive, right?

And we see them, you know, acting in a way which might little bit [00:40:00] worry, you know, the investors in your opinion and how founders should communicate, like when there's kind of a conviction, right? Without. Showing that they are either defensive or delusional, you know, because per personally, I've seen the guys who, you know, like whatever question that come, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We, we, we have done our test or no, no. You know, like we, we've, we've, we've done this before and, you know, the investor, they feel okay, what these guys are even talking about, you know, like, is it their first time they pitch? So how founders should, should, you know, act or react to, to, to, to, to these kinds of objections.

Ben: So I think it's, I think it's great if you're, if you're a founder and you get interrupted by the investor, that's amazing because a, that shows that they're actually listening, which is rare. Like they, in a bad pitch. The worst thing is where the, the investor's like looking at her phone or checking her email and then looks up at the end and says, oh, thank you very much, you know, we'll get back to you.

Which means that [00:41:00] they, they weren't really paying attention. You lost them pretty early. If an investor, even if they're incredibly rude. Cuts you off, that's actually a good sign because it means that you've provoked them and you've got their attention. And even if it's, I, I was cursed out twice when I was pitching my fund in the early years.

I was actually cursed out during a pitch twice, and which is very shocking. Um, what in the world? Uh, I, I was just pre I was just presenting like a financial investment opportunity. What in the world had I said that got people so upset that they cursed me out? And it was fascinating to, to reverse engineer it.

By the way, both of those, um, interruptions were incredibly meaningful to me and both changed my life. Like literally because what I was saying was, so my, what I, my business claim or my opportunity was so unusual and was so provocative that it got people upset [00:42:00] and I didn't realize how cool that was.

Like that was actually a good sign because it meant that what I was. Pitching was so counterintuitive that if I was wrong, it was stupid. But if I was right, I was the first one to spot it in. In one of those cases, the person who cursed me out ended up, I I I kept my calm in both cases. And what you should do is you say, wow, uh, thank you.

I, I hope that nobody gets cursed out, but if you get interrupted, you say, well, thank you so much. I, I really actually appreciate you interrupting me. Um, it's a very good question. Whatever the investor wants to know is much more important than what, than what you wanna say. If they interrupt your pitch, that's fine.

In fact, I'm gonna interrupt myself and say that we, I published, in addition to the book, I published a bunch of free resources for founders including, uh, a template, uh, pitch deck that is available for free@feverpitchbook.com, at the same landing page for the book. You can just take a right turn and go into a totally free 10 slide playbook that gives you notes and, and [00:43:00] explanations.

And after, I think slide three. We have a timeout slide, which we, we purposely put in there and said, okay, we're actually interrupting ourselves because this is what you should do during a deck. I'm, I wrote in the slide deck. I bet you have a bunch of questions and those are more important than anything I wanna say right now.

So let's deal with your questions, and you should do the same thing in your deck. If you are in the middle of a presentation and the investor interrupts you, then stop yourself and make sure that you address that, address that question. It could be, um, okay, let me skip to another slide. I have that on another slide, or, let me elaborate.

I'm sorry if something wasn't clear, but yes, interruption actually is a good thing. And in my life, getting cursed out twice was one of the most amazing things that ever happened to me. It was incredibly shocking and disturbing at the time, but one of those investors had so misunderstood what I was saying, that he literally cursed me out and I was able to say, oh, you know what?

Why don't we schedule another call later on, and I can go into this in more detail. Because it [00:44:00] was in a public setting, so I couldn't, I couldn't stop everything I just said, okay, I get it. But let, let's follow up later. And he became one of my most important investors. Um, the other person had correctly identified, it was early on in my, in my days of a vc, and he just interrupted me and said, what's your process or something?

And I really didn't have a good process. I didn't have a good answer. And he like, cursed me out and said, you have no effing idea what you're doing. And he slammed the phone down and it made me think, you know what? I, I think he's right. I didn't have a good answer to that question. And it, I had to go beef up my process.

And, and because of him, I, I think I would've kept going the way I was going for a while. But because he so shocked me and called me out, it made me like work on that and, and really improve my, my process. So I ended up meeting him a couple years later and I, I, I went out to his city where he lived in another country just to meet him and thank him.

And he thought it was so weird. Like he said, I didn't do anything for you. I'm. You don't realize what impact you had on me when [00:45:00] you interrupted me and, and barked at me and told me that I was on the wrong track. You were right. And I, I did the work and I made myself better. And it's because of you. It was so cool to have that interaction with him.

I think he was completely blown away that I had given him that credit. So getting interrupted is very powerful and important, and you should embrace it and use it, not get defensive or upset. Um, it, it's a, it's a positive thing usually. Yeah. 

Mehmet: Yeah. You know, like, this reminds me also, like even, you know, I work in B2B sales, you know, uh, for, for, for years.

And I, and I saw as a, from the, the, the technology consultant seat and then before jumping to, to the, to the sales seat. And I was always telling my sales counterpart, he was like, happy, you know, like we go out of the meeting, Hey, see, like they didn't ask any questions. I said, this is bad news, my friend, if they didn't ask any, any questions.

This goes really bad. And to your point, like even, and I think this applies for if you are pitching [00:46:00] to an investor, to a customer, you know, you, you're talking to someone. And I tell people, like when they ask me a lot of questions and they have a lot of objection, I tell them I think we are onto something.

Because now, you know, they, they in a way they feel, you know, the urgency to, to ask you the question because. You're up to something and you, they are defending the status quo somehow. Right? So, um, which resonates, even as you mentioned, if you are an investor now, one of the things, um, that can happen also ban, especially with startups, I mean, founders kind in the early stage where still they don't have a lot of numbers to share.

They, you know, maybe they have an MVP, you know, like, let's call them, they are still in the pre-seed phase, right? So one of the things, and we, we. People [00:47:00] in life usually, like, you know, you need to build trust, you know, between you and the person you're trying to pitch to whoever this person is. Now, what have you seen working, uh, and again, if, if there's something from the heart framework that can apply here, um, what founders, you know, what, what they can use, what they can do to build this kind of trust.

Of course they cannot build it any minute we understand this, but anything you, you can, you can hint them to, to build this trust. Sure. 

Ben: So the heart framework is ideal for the founder who's just starting. In fact, mark in the book is a classic, you know, he has no money, he has no product, he has no revenue.

Um, and so I'm, I'm writing that story to sort of depict like the most extreme. Vulnerable case. Mm-hmm. He's got, he's got nothing. He's just got a partner and an idea. And there are investors for every stage of a company, even if the company doesn't exist. I'm one of the, I'm a, I'm an investor. I'm a VC [00:48:00] who invests at inception stage, day zero, or what I call, you know, two people, a dog and an idea in a garage.

So I am every day looking for those opportunities in my local community that are completely unformed. Just, you know, two or three people with an idea. There aren't a lot of people like me, but there are people like me. They're, they're either angel investors or professional VCs who like to invest at the inception stage or, you know, FF, F, you know, friends, family, and fools.

There are investors who will invest in, in a startup at any stage, including day zero. So the next step is for the founder, is to make sure that you're not wasting your time and talking to investors who have explicitly said that they don't invest at that stage. So. If you are a day zero founder, you don't want to go or waste your time going to a VC who on their website says, you know, we invest at series A or series B, or we invest, you know, when there's traction or a product or, you know, meaningful revenue, just [00:49:00] avoid them because they've already stated that they're not appropriate for your stage.

So find, do a little bit of research. It's like dating. You don't wanna just send a blank email to every member of the opposite sex in the world saying, hi, would you, you know, like, to marry me? That would be ridiculous. But founders are doing that all the time, you know, sending like bulk emails to, you know, dear investor, dear sir or madam, really, like, look at my website.

I'm a sir. I'm not a madam. I, you know, do, do the work because, because we, you want to, you want this to develop into a relationship that's probably gonna last longer than most marriages today, unfort, unfortunately. So, uh, do the research. Find the, the investors that seem to be the right ones for your stage.

And then, um. There are people for, for every stage of, of opportunity, including the earliest stages, just find the right ones who are, have some, made some indication that they're appropriate for your stage. 

Mehmet: Then one [00:50:00] question also that I get asked sometimes, like, what is too, too short to be short and what is too long to be long?

Um, especially let's, let's say first meeting, right? So probably someone reach out to you on LinkedIn and you know, they figure out like, okay Ben, this is his thesis. This is what he invest in, invest, um, I'm gonna reach out to him. And then they send you their blur. You agree to take a meeting with them. So that meeting, like as founder, like how should I be prepared from time perspective?

So I meet, I make sure that also I respect the time, uh, of, of the investor also as well. 

Ben: Right. So that's a great question. I think the H-E-A-R-T framework is the most concise, consolidated form of your pitch, and that is the raw, like distilled, boiled down essence of the pitch. And that can be as short as like five or six [00:51:00] sentences.

So if know if it's a, if it's a cold, and try to avoid cold contacts because a warm contact is worth a hundred times a cold contact. But if you have to, or if you have to introduce yourself after a warm intro, keep it very, very succinct and say hi, you know, nice to meet you at my x, y, Z company. We believe that blank is, you know, messed up or, or whatever, ripe for disruption, uh, or inefficient or whatever.

Um, there's a lot at stake because blank. Uh, the current alternatives are, you know, blank comma blank, comma blank. They fall short because blank. We have a radically game changing, paradigm shifting solution that does X, Y, Z. Me and my team, you know, have the requisite, you know, capabilities because we blank, blank, blank.

And that's, that could be one paragraph. And in fact, at the end of the playbook that I referenced on the web, we, we have a, a generator, not an AI generator, but like a question, a form 

Mehmet: mm-hmm. That is 

Ben: strained by character. So it, meaning I have some friends who, who made this into an [00:52:00] ai, but I don't, I don't recommend that this, this has to be, this has to come from you, the founder.

So take the time and write the words, and we force you to answer the questions with very few words. So you have to really get it down to like the, the real core, powerful language, like the most. And that will spit out, in my opinion, your H-E-A-R-T. Elevator pitch. So that's the shortest form is that. Now what happens is you can then expand that out like an accordion if you get more time.

So that, that is your H-A-A-R-T pitch is what you whip out if you bump into me on the street or an elevator. If you're at a demo day, you have a three minute or a five minute pitch, you just expand out the H-A-A-R-T. Spend a little more time explaining each thing. Maybe add in, you know, some other sprinkles like the business model or the go to market, whatever else you have room to, to discuss.

And if you're, if you're invited to an actual in-person meeting where you have an hour, then the max is 20 minutes. That's the guy Kawasaki famous [00:53:00] 10, 20, 30 rule. 10 slides, no more than 20 minutes, no smaller than 30 point font on the slides. Because even if you have a one hour meeting, the mistake is to use the whole one hour.

Talking at the investor, you want to talk for no more than 20 minutes initially and leave the rest of the time for question answer with the, with the investor because, and this is the other secret, which is already pretty open, most investors are not going to make a decision in that first conversation.

What you're trying to do is get them into a conversation and then get a second date, get a second meeting, and then you're gonna go into much further detail. So there, there's this pressure. I think unfortunately founders feel a lot of pressure to cram everything into that first meeting 'cause it's their only chance.

The answer is no, it's not your only chance. If you do a good job, you give them the basics, like the teaser of your movie trailer in the first couple minutes and then that invites them to sit [00:54:00] down and watch your whole movie to, to really get into it with you later in that meeting or in a second meeting.

So trying to reduce the pressure to cram everything in. 'cause like you said, less is more. You want to give them that initial really essential core pressure point H-E-A-R-T pitch, and that should, if it works, engage them into more detailed conversation. 

Mehmet: Just quick one on, on, on what you mentioned about, you know, feeling pressured on time, Ben.

Um, my, my notice, I, I would like to, to to hear your opinion is that like founders, I'm not saying they leave themselves last minute, but they set the expectation on time very wrongly. And then what happens, let's say it depends of course on the, which stage they are in. So let's say they have their runway.

Uh, and then all of a sudden they figure, oh, like we are, we are burning cash. We have [00:55:00] only, let's say three months and we need to raise fast. And then we see them doing these mistakes. Versus sometimes I've seen like people who do it very rightly and they start to plan, you know, the fundraising in a very, I would say, you know, forward thinking manner.

Uh, so they don't even themselves, look, I not, I not use the word desperate, but you know, because I've seen, I've seen, I've seen people looking desperate and, you know, so how, how much this also is important for founders to, to, to to time the, the, the, the, the, the, the best moment when they need to start this fundraising journey?

Ben: Yeah. Ideally, I mean, there are certain rules of thumb. Ideally, you know, people will say the best thing to do is to start raising when you have, you know, at least six to 12 months of runway because it just takes that long to. Typically to get a venture capitalist. Now, angels or private investors can move faster, but you [00:56:00] can't guarantee that you're going to click that quickly with somebody who can make a decision quickly.

So sometimes these processes take, unfortunately, take months, and then you have documents that can take another two months easily in some places. So you just, like you said, you don't wanna leave it till the last minute because it's going to take, even if you're successful in raising money, just the process of meeting a bunch of times and getting the lawyers to get together and get the documents ready, uh, you don't wanna be caught, you know, running outta cash.

Uh, as that happens, sometimes you don't have the luxury of doing it. Sometimes it just takes too long and you're desperate. And there is a lot of desperation in the book, uh, that I talk about, and there's desperation in real life and you just have to try to survive as best as possible and, uh, and die another day.

So from an optimal point of view, yeah, it's great to raise money when you have another 12 months of runway. Not all of us get to do that. And so you have to be incredibly resilient and incredibly [00:57:00] tough to be able to try to get the cash as soon as you can before you, you run out. 

Mehmet: Right? Ben? You know, like one, one thing, which, uh, because I don't want to skip this question.

Um, ai, right? And, um, AI is on top of mind of everyone, VCs, founders, operators, everyone is talking about the ai. Now, of course, you gave us, uh, the example of. Like how I should position it in a way that's not like just I say, Hey, I have AI using jargons. You, you mentioned this in the framework, but really from investor's perspective because, you know, and um, you mentioned the book, the, the Venture Mindset, which I, which I read and you know, like, uh, it's a great book also.

And you know, the way that also as VCs and investors in general who, who, who follow startups. So their biggest [00:58:00] thing that they say, okay, we, we don't want to miss, uh, the opportunity. And there's a lot of examples in that book and in other books on how investor they missed like, great opportunities like PayPal, eBay, you, you just name it.

So now with everything happening from investor point of view, what really, you know, separates, I would say hype. From clarity and really something which we think it's investible. And this is a question for fellow VCs, I would say, or fellow investors in general. 

Ben: Yeah. So I don't, I don't claim to be a, a guru or to have like a, a really comprehensive bird's eye view.

I, I have a, my own personal opinion. Mm-hmm. Um, just my own. Okay. Um, and, and I'm really speaking more to the founders out there who might be working on AI things because it's the, it's ob obviously, it's the most important trend right now that we've seen in, of course, in a long time, maybe in our [00:59:00] lifetimes.

So there, the founder needs to be aware that there's two completely divergent schools of thought among VCs. One school of thought is the FOMO driven, you know, vc like you described, like, oh my god, you know, we, we do not wanna miss this. We're just, if, if you, are you doing ai, that's amazing. You know, coming into our office.

Um, and, and there is some of that. There's another. School of thought that says, yes, we recognize that AI is the next biggest trend, but everybody's working on it. So I'm actually gonna be more skeptical if you come and, and try to pitch me on, you know, AI driven customer success, or AI driven healthcare, personalized healthcare.

And, and your pitch starts off by saying, everybody knows that AI is the next biggest thing. So clearly you should be interested in our AI driven, you know, X, Y, Z for, for, you know, a, b, C. Just be be aware that investors may completely agree with the [01:00:00] first part of your statement, but be very skeptical.

Skeptical about the second half. Like, yes, because we agree with you that AI is the next biggest thing. We're also incredibly skeptical that you guys are gonna be the ones to win in AI driven customer success when there's a hundred companies out there that are already doing it, and probably another thousand that are working on it in their bedrooms, in their garages that we haven't even seen yet.

So. The sophisticated investor is gonna say, we, we both agree that AI is the trend and that's actually why I'm, I'm more skeptical about you because it's so overheated and so hot that you need to explain to me why you have something that's, you know, 10 times better than the rest when everybody right now is focused on this.

So, right. There's two different schools of thoughts and, and I think some founders assume that, you know, any investor that knows that AI is a big thing is going to be interested in their AI driven startup, when in fact, in many cases it's the opposite because we know AI is the next big thing. We know everybody's working on it.

Almost every white space [01:01:00] that can be imagined. So why are you and your two friends going to be the ones to win in this ai, you know, space with what you're doing when we know that there's like a lot of people probably right now. Working on that, you know, that very same thing. So I think that's just something that founders and, and anybody working on AI needs to be aware of that.

Yes, it's two sides of a coin. It's the coolest, most amazing, wildest thing that we've seen ever. And because of that, so many people are working on things in that space that it may actually be harder than ever to be successful in that space. So it's a, it's a almost a contradictory, it's a catch 22, if you will, um, that you just need to be aware of and then be, be able to address it.

Mehmet: Right. Uh, you know, if I want to walk away with anything from the discussion today with you, Ben, and this is really something that, uh, and, and sincerely, I'm [01:02:00] not saying this just as a compliment, uh, is, you know, the hard framework you just described as a way for pitching. I see it as a compass for me as a founder.

Right. Am I doing the right thing is and why I'm doing it that, you know, I, we, you, you started with this, with starting with Y and all the rest, you know, the E, the A, the R, the T. So, so, so this is kind for me. And by the way, I tell people, you know, they come ask me about, you know, business plans and templates and, and that tell them guys like, this is your GPS.

So today you are here in point A, you're trying to reach point B and you know, consider this as your GPS. So I can consider, you know, the hard framework as a GPS for me. And of course I use it to my pitching and the other, you know, uh, thing that I took away for investors. Reverse engineering the hard framework for me to see like if this really, [01:03:00] uh, a, a startup, uh, that is worth that.

I give them the time to listen to them, to support them, build the relationship with them. So this for me was a, was a, uh, walkaway, I would say. Uh, as we are coming close to, to the end, final thoughts, Ben, of course. You know, and traditional question where people can get in touch. 

Ben: So first of all, I, first of all, I appreciate the kind things that you said, and I wanna make it like crystal clear.

I, I don't claim, I think I tried to reference this earlier on, on, in our conversation, but like, I don't claim that I made all this stuff up. What I'm, what I'm claiming is I found a lot of this stuff out there in the world and in the book in clever ways. I've tried to reference a lot of the sources of people that are much smarter than me, where I took the pieces and, and built the framework and retranslated it for a piece.

So I just wanna make it clear that I don't claim to be this genius who like, thought the whole thing up from scratch. I just claim to be the guy who's translating it and, and bringing it into our world of startup land and making it accessible to, to founders in, in a language. [01:04:00] Uh, and a framework that they can use.

So I appreciate your, your kindness and your, your giving me credit, but a lot of the credit goes to other people. I'm just, you know, re retranslate and representing their work, especially Guy Kawasaki who like, wrote the foreword. Like, I'm, I'm deeply indebted to him and he, he appears in the book and I'm trying to build on his framework.

So, so that's number one. Um, if people are interested in, in finding out more, like I said, love for them to enjoy the book. But if you don't wanna read a 250 page novel, um, you can go to fever pitch book.com and further down on the page, there's a way to get into the playbook, which is free the Pitch Generator, which is free.

And those are just free resources to be helpful to founders. I think this industry has been very great to, to me, and I'm very grateful and want to give back to founders and, and just empower them to have better chances of success, uh, when they're, you know, interacting with bozos like me, who, who need to give them the money.

So. That stuff is free. The book is a lot of fun. It's gotten [01:05:00] amazing ratings on Amazon. It hit number one as I mentioned. Um, so people really do enjoy it, but I don't, you know, I'm not forcing people to consume the book, to, to get the framework. It's just a more fun way to, and, and there's a lot of other stuff in the book that's a entertaining, but also there's a lot of other Easter eggs and treasure maps and other resources and ideas for founders and the people that work with founders.

It, it, the book is written to be fun for entrepreneurs, but also those who love and care for them because you'll start to understand a little better if you're living with a founder or working with a founder. I think the book should give a little more insight into how their brains work and, and what the mistakes they make are and, and why, and how to help them out of it if they get stuck.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Again, uh, I would like to thank you a lot, Ben, for sharing your insights. Of course, the links will be available in the show notes, so if, uh, anyone is listening on, you know, apple [01:06:00] Podcast, uh, Spotify, or any other podcasting platform, you find them there. If you're watching us on YouTube, you find them in description.

And finally, uh, again, big thank you for you Ben, and this is how I end my episodes. This is for the audience. If you just discovered us, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, so, give me a favor, subscribe, share to your friends and colleagues as you are seeing. The main goal of this podcast is education is bringing people like Ben, who have, you know, done a lot of of great things for the industry.

For startups, entrepreneurs and operators sharing their expertise. And I'm trying to extract this and share it also myself as part of a give back. Same like you, Ben. And if you're one of the people who keeps, again, again, keeps coming again and again, thank you for the support. Thank you for the, you know, I'm very grateful.

You know, like this year, 2025 was, uh, a, a special year because I've seen the podcast [01:07:00] always trending in one country around the world. In the top 200 podcast, uh, apple Podcast, uh, charts in the entrepreneurship, uh, category and sometime in the business and in some countries even, we were like top 200 overall categories.

This is cannot happen without all the support. All, you know, the feedback I receive from you and I try always to enhance, to make a better version of myself also as well. So thank you for being part of this journey, and as I say, always stay tuned for any episode very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.