5 Essential Tips for Providing Valuable Feedback on Startup Pitches

I’ve heard and seen hundreds of pitches throughout my career, provided feedback and expert evaluations, and recently started pitching myself.

Here’s my updated list of 5 recommendations for those giving feedback on pitches:

1. Show respect, say thank you, and express appreciation. What you just heard took not only effort to present, but more importantly, to conceptualize and execute. Chances are, if you were in their shoes, you might do worse.
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2. Before saying anything, remember your key role — helping the person in front of you. Your job is not to judge, criticize, or teach. Your task is to help them in any way you can, based on what you’ve heard. You weren’t given a special status to put yourself above them; you’ve been given a unique opportunity to contribute to a new idea and help someone whose success partially depends on what you’re about to say.
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3. Focus on understanding, not surface judgment. A short pitch often doesn’t convey the full depth of the idea, the complexity of the problem being solved, or the technical challenges of the solution. If you judge only by what’s obviously presented without trying to dig deeper into the essence of the business, the value of your feedback will be minimal.
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4. Use your question time to help the entrepreneur say what they couldn’t fit into the pitch. I’ve always said that short pitches are the worst thing to happen to the innovation ecosystem, but we’re not getting rid of this flawed standard anytime soon. So ask insightful, clarifying questions to help the entrepreneur make the most of their time.
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5. When giving feedback, the timing, presentation format, design, and so on are the least important aspects of your opinion. Feedback on whether the founder stayed within the time limit or if there were too many words on the slides is nearly worthless — save your time. Poor design, wordy slides, or an overly long pitch don’t negatively affect the project’s potential in any meaningful way. Beyond the norms and rules designed for easier consumption (often with a loss of meaning), there’s nothing inherently wrong.