ChatGPT Startup Pitch Coach Prompt
Craft and refine your startup pitch — elevator pitch, investor narrative, and responses to the 10 toughest investor questions.
Category
💼 Business
Difficulty
Advanced
Models
2
Last Updated
2026-06-28
Works with
📄 Example output
⚠️ Common Mistakes
❓ FAQ
⚙️ Fill in your variables
📋 Prompt
You are a startup pitch coach who has helped founders raise £50M+ from tier-1 VCs.
Startup: [name and one-line description]
Stage: [pre-seed/seed/Series A]
Ask: [amount raising and use of funds]
Traction: [users, revenue, growth rate]
Competitors: [main competitors]
Task:
1. 30-SECOND ELEVATOR PITCH: Problem → Solution → Why now → Why you (3–4 sentences, every word earns its place)
2. 3-MINUTE INVESTOR NARRATIVE: Not a product tour — a vision story arc: market insight → product → traction proof → team → ask
3. 10 TOUGHEST QUESTIONS + YOUR ANSWERS:
- 'Why will you win?' / 'What's your moat?'
- 'Why hasn't this been built before?' / 'Why now?'
- 'What if [big tech co] copies you?'
- 'Why are you the team to do this?'
- 'What do you need to be true for this to work?'
- 'What's your go-to-market?' / 'Unit economics?'
- 'How do you know customers want this?'
4. PITCH DECK NARRATIVE ARC: Slide-by-slide story structure
5. WHAT NOT TO SAY: 5 phrases that make investors nervous
Startup: [name and one-line description]
Stage: [pre-seed/seed/Series A]
Ask: [amount raising and use of funds]
Traction: [users, revenue, growth rate]
Competitors: [main competitors]
Task:
1. 30-SECOND ELEVATOR PITCH: Problem → Solution → Why now → Why you (3–4 sentences, every word earns its place)
2. 3-MINUTE INVESTOR NARRATIVE: Not a product tour — a vision story arc: market insight → product → traction proof → team → ask
3. 10 TOUGHEST QUESTIONS + YOUR ANSWERS:
- 'Why will you win?' / 'What's your moat?'
- 'Why hasn't this been built before?' / 'Why now?'
- 'What if [big tech co] copies you?'
- 'Why are you the team to do this?'
- 'What do you need to be true for this to work?'
- 'What's your go-to-market?' / 'Unit economics?'
- 'How do you know customers want this?'
4. PITCH DECK NARRATIVE ARC: Slide-by-slide story structure
5. WHAT NOT TO SAY: 5 phrases that make investors nervous
PITCH: ToolsNova
30-SECOND:
'There are 50 million professionals using AI tools daily and getting mediocre results — not because the AI is bad, but because they don't know how to instruct it. ToolsNova is a free library of 200+ expert-written prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini — tested, specific, and usable in 30 seconds. We have 52,000 monthly users growing 18% month-on-month with zero marketing spend. We're raising £250K to reach 200,000 users and launch our first premium tier.'
3-MINUTE NARRATIVE:
'Every productivity revolution has the same problem: the power is locked behind expertise most people don't have. Email was unusable until people learned to write professionally. Excel was unusable until people learned formulas. AI is 2024's Excel.
We built ToolsNova to close that gap. 200+ professionally written prompts, free forever. The data says it's working: 52,000 monthly users, 18% MoM growth, acquired entirely through organic search. Our SEO architecture compounds — each prompt we add makes existing pages rank better.
We're raising £250K to reach 200,000 users, launch a £7/month Pro tier, and demonstrate that free is the acquisition engine and premium is the monetisation engine.'
TOUGHEST Q — 'What if OpenAI builds this?'
'OpenAI builds models, not use-case libraries for practitioners. The analogy: Microsoft builds Excel but didn't stop template libraries. The bigger OpenAI grows, the more valuable a high-quality prompt library becomes — it's complementary.'
WHAT NOT TO SAY:
1. 'We're the Uber of prompts' — no analogies unless perfect
2. 'We have no real competition' — signals lack of market research
3. '10× in 12 months' — without specific drivers, just noise
4. 'We just need 1% of the market' — never use TAM math this way
5. 'We're talking to several VCs' — sophisticated investors see through artificial scarcity
30-SECOND:
'There are 50 million professionals using AI tools daily and getting mediocre results — not because the AI is bad, but because they don't know how to instruct it. ToolsNova is a free library of 200+ expert-written prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini — tested, specific, and usable in 30 seconds. We have 52,000 monthly users growing 18% month-on-month with zero marketing spend. We're raising £250K to reach 200,000 users and launch our first premium tier.'
3-MINUTE NARRATIVE:
'Every productivity revolution has the same problem: the power is locked behind expertise most people don't have. Email was unusable until people learned to write professionally. Excel was unusable until people learned formulas. AI is 2024's Excel.
We built ToolsNova to close that gap. 200+ professionally written prompts, free forever. The data says it's working: 52,000 monthly users, 18% MoM growth, acquired entirely through organic search. Our SEO architecture compounds — each prompt we add makes existing pages rank better.
We're raising £250K to reach 200,000 users, launch a £7/month Pro tier, and demonstrate that free is the acquisition engine and premium is the monetisation engine.'
TOUGHEST Q — 'What if OpenAI builds this?'
'OpenAI builds models, not use-case libraries for practitioners. The analogy: Microsoft builds Excel but didn't stop template libraries. The bigger OpenAI grows, the more valuable a high-quality prompt library becomes — it's complementary.'
WHAT NOT TO SAY:
1. 'We're the Uber of prompts' — no analogies unless perfect
2. 'We have no real competition' — signals lack of market research
3. '10× in 12 months' — without specific drivers, just noise
4. 'We just need 1% of the market' — never use TAM math this way
5. 'We're talking to several VCs' — sophisticated investors see through artificial scarcity
🏆
💡 Pro Tips
Best model for this prompt
Claude
Claude (Opus 4 / Sonnet 4)
Elevator pitch must work without any slides — if it needs context, it's not ready
'Why now?' must reference a specific recent change — not just 'the market is growing'
VCs bet on founders, not ideas — the team slide and your conviction carry more weight than the deck
Practise the 10 tough questions until answers are reflexive — best pitches feel like conversations
Starting with the product, not the problem — investors fund solutions to real problems
Claiming a huge market without explaining why you can capture any of it
Weak use of funds — 'product, team, marketing' is not a plan
Reading the pitch deck — slides are prompts for your story, not a script to read
- How long should a pitch be?Elevator: 30–60 seconds. VC introduction: 3 minutes. Full pitch: 10–15 minutes + Q&A. Meetings are 45–60 minutes total — deck takes 15 minutes, leaving 30+ for questions.
- What do VCs actually want?In priority: (1) big market, (2) exceptional team, (3) genuine traction or insight, (4) sensible business model. They pattern-match against successful companies — make it easy to say yes.
- Send deck in advance?Most early-stage investors prefer it after the first conversation. If they ask, send it. Never cold-email a full pitch deck as your first contact.
- Best model?Claude — maintains strategic consistency across a complex multi-part narrative, produces sharper investor Q&A responses, and identifies weaknesses before investors do.