In this episode of How to Sell Your Vision, I interviewed Michael Krikheli, founder of 5Sigma—an insurance claims processing company using AI to automate workflows with tools like auto-adjusters and more.

I asked Michael about the role of AI in investor pitches, and his response was spot on:
"The goal of your pitch is to convince the investor that you’re solving a real problem—not that you’ve built amazing technology."

I wanted to highlight that part of our conversation because I see it time and time again: brilliant founders lose their audience by leading with “AI” instead of the problem they’re solving.

That’s why I also wrote this article on Medium: If you want investors to stop listening to your pitch, keep saying AI.

Michael nailed it—there’s always a technology (today it’s AI), but investors care most about the problem. The problem is the scalable part. The transformation it enables is the story.

Focus on the problem. Make it urgent. Make it crystal clear.
The rest will follow.

Founders, don’t miss this one.

In this session of How to Sell Your Vision, I sat down with Benjamin Narasin, founder and GP at Tenacity Ventures—and his insights are powerful.

He breaks down some of the biggest misconceptions founders still follow when fundraising. Here are just a few takeaways:

• A good deck shouldn’t say everything—it should spark curiosity and lead investors to you. You are the color of the company.

• A strong deck ends not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to remove.

• If someone offers you an investor intro, don’t send the deck in advance.

• The deck you send and the deck you present should not be the same. Your delivery deck should use visuals to empower your pitch—not text to tell the story.

This episode is packed with sharp insights you’ll want to take in. Give it a listen.

In my work, I see a lot of founders who, for some reason, are still fixated on the old ways of pitching—thinking they must present a trillion‑dollar TAM and lofty projections because that’s what investors want.

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: if you need an explosive TAM and out‑of‑this‑world projections to hook investors, your story and solution are probably off the mark.

But not to be fixed on my own pitching philosophy, I decided to address this topic of valuations and projections in one of my podcast sessions.

I was truly humbled to have Ron Levin, Managing Partner at Alumni Ventures, as a guest on my podcast, How to Sell Your Vision, and to hear his thoughts on today’s pitching process.

Alumni Ventures is one of the most active VCs in the U.S., with over 30 unicorns in its portfolio, over 150 exits, 14 IPOs, and more than 140 acquisitions.

Among the many powerful insights he shared, Ron spoke about how you position your startups—and it goes back to my earlier point. He said, “Don’t sell me the unicorn promise. On the contrary, I want to see that you’re mature enough to know the steps necessary to achieve your goals. Being ambitious is great, but we need to be realistic as well.”

He added, “It applies to projections, too. If a founder presents an ARR of $500,000 in Year One and $5M in Year Two, it tells me one of two things: they clearly don't realise the work it takes to make this leap, or they don’t need my money.”

I truly recommend that all early‑stage founders reading this post listen to this eye‑opening episode