An international accelerator keeps bringing me back to coach their portfolio companies on exactly one thing: positioning. Not the pitch deck. Not delivery. Positioning.
I have seen endless of founders rewrite their pitch deck ten times and they still hit the same wall.
The story doesn’t land.
Investors nod, but they don’t lean in.
The team keeps tweaking the wording.
Advisors give conflicting notes.
And everyone assumes the deck needs more work.
Sometimes it does.
But here’s what I actually find when a founder asks me to “fix the pitch”: - the deck was never broken on its own.
The company simply hadn’t made the decisions the pitch was supposed to express.
That’s positioning. It’s the decision behind the pitch - not the pitch itself.
The Common Problem: Founders Try to Write Before They Decide
In almost every coaching session, I hear some version of the same diagnosis:
“The deck is too long.”
“The opening is weak.”
“We need a better story.”
“We need to sound more investor-ready.”
“Maybe the design needs to be stronger.”
Maybe.
But usually, those are symptoms. The real issue is that the founder hasn’t decided who they’re really for, what problem they own, what category they’re playing in, or why this matters now.
So, when those answers stay vague, the deck becomes a patchwork - a slide for the advisor’s note, a slide for the investor’s question, a slide trying to cover every possible customer. It gets longer. It does not get clearer.
Here’s the misconception that keeps founders stuck: they think broad positioning is the safe choice.
“We help companies become more efficient.”
“We use AI to improve decision-making.”
“We support teams with better workflows.”
None of these are wrong, exactly. But none of them are usable either. An investor reading this can’t place you. They don’t know who urgently needs this, what pain you own, or why now is the moment. So they stay polite. They say “interesting.” They do not lean forward.
Positioning, Messaging, and Pitching Are Not the Same Thing
This is the distinction I keep coming back to:
Positioning is the decision - who you’re really for, what problem you want to own, what category you play in.
Messaging is how you say it.
Pitching is how you make people believe it.
You can rewrite the messaging endlessly. You can rebuild the deck from scratch. But if the positioning underneath hasn’t been decided, the words will improve and the meaning will still be vague. Investors can feel that — even when they can’t name it.
Messaging makes the sentence sound better. Positioning makes the sentence mean something.
The Shift: Position Before You Pitch
Before you touch the deck again, answer five questions - in this order.
1. Who is this built for? Not everyone who could theoretically use it. The specific customer who feels this pain right now.
2. What problem do you own? Not the full list of things your product can do. The one problem you want investors and customers to associate with you.
3. What category are you in? Not your industry label. The mental shelf where an investor should place you - what should they compare you with?
4. Why now? Not why this could be useful someday. Why the market is shifting in a way that makes this urgent today.
5. What changes if you win? Not your feature list. The shift you create in the market if this works.
These five questions are the actual work. Writing the slide is not.
From Vague to Sharp
Weak positioning sounds like this:
“We help companies work smarter with AI.”
Sharper positioning sounds like this:
“We help CFO teams in fast-growing SaaS companies cut monthly reporting from three weeks to three days — without replacing their existing finance stack.”
The second version forces five choices at once: who (CFO teams in fast-growing SaaS), the problem (reporting takes too long), the urgency (slow reporting delays decisions), the category (finance workflow infrastructure), and the reason to believe it (it works with what they already have).
That’s positioning doing its job — before the pitch even starts.
What Clear Positioning Does
When the five decisions are actually made, the pitch changes shape on its own.
• You know what to lead with - the problem you own, not the company history.
• You know what to leave out - because every detail stops competing for attention.
• Competition stops being a threat and becomes proof you’ve found the right category.
• The ask connects to a real opportunity, not just a funding need.
This isn’t about sounding more polished. It’s about having fewer things left to defend, because you’ve already decided what matters.
The Bottom Line
I know the hesitation. Positioning forces you to choose, and choosing feels risky.
If we name this customer, do we lose the others?
If we own this one problem, does the company sound smaller?
If we pick a category, are we inviting comparison?
Maybe. But the alternative is worse: when you avoid the choice, the investor makes it for you. That rarely works in your favor.
So before you open the deck again, ask yourself: are we trying to sound clearer, or are we actually getting clearer? Have we made the hard choices, or are we hiding behind broad language? Would three people on your team describe your positioning the same way?
If not, don’t start with another slide.
Position first. Pitch second.
Because your pitch can’t fix a positioning problem.
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1. Deep-dive Digital Courses - Self-paced courses teaching you the essential tools and skills you need to create and deliver a fantastic pitch so you can go from “I do not know what to say” to “when can I pitch next?
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