[muzani]

You don't need that much charisma. YC expects charts to do most of the speaking for demo day. I find that many investors are also experienced enough to go through a bad pitch and find out the details of what you meant to say.

Impressing people with a pitch is more about having the right slides in the right order, rather than making some joke. I've pitched to dozens of people, and it's never like it is on Shark Tank... most investors are already rooting for you by the time you meet them.

There's plenty of resources for this, but the easiest is to just join an accelerator. They're very beginner friendly. Many aren't that good, but they should help you to at least learn to pitch.

[datahellscape]

Who could I pitch to? What's a good deal? Accelerators/Incubators seem like a potential pitch target sure, maybe even solving most of those problems quite efficiently but they also seem like a path that comes with a bad deal, even more so for this industry

[muzani]

YC does basically 7% for $125k + $375k. Plus mentoring, discounts, access to higher level VCs and so on. https://www.ycombinator.com/deal

The deals seem to drop substantially from the top accelerator, but the bar drops too. I like accelerators though, because going in cold to a larger VC is hard, and just the "acceleration" of a few warm intros is usually worth the 7% or so. You'd be looking to grow 7% weekly anyway, it's not a huge cut even if you get almost no money.

The bad deals are generally the ones that slow you down. These are the guys that drop bad advice, interfere in how things are operating, scare off other investors. Like you don't want to give a portion to a bad accelerator and then try to join YC.

IMO if you're learning a lot just by talking to them, they're probably a good deal. Most will open the door for you, listen to your pitch, give you all kinds of amazing advice and data, then wish you luck. Those ones are good.