Practice your startup pitch in English

Founders from everywhere pitch in English — to investors, accelerators, competitions, and partners. The pitch itself you can memorize; the questions afterwards you cannot. Fumbling an answer about your market or your numbers costs more than an accent ever will.

Airi plays the investor. Deliver your pitch out loud, then let her ask what investors really ask: how big is the market, why now, why you, what are the unit economics, what happens if a big player copies you. Rehearse until your answers are crisp and confident, in English that sounds like you.

A quick example with Airi

I'm an investor. You have two minutes — go.

We help small restaurants to manage orders from many apps in one dashboard. We have 300 restaurants using it.

Small fix: "help small restaurants manage orders." Good traction. Why can't the delivery apps just build this themselves?

Because they compete with each other, and restaurants want a neutral tool that work with all of them.

"That works with all of them." Strong answer — that's the kind of clarity investors want.

Try a conversation like this, free600 free credits, about 8 minutes of speaking. No card.

The seven questions a startup pitch has to answer

In his Y Combinator post "How to Pitch Your Company," Michael Seibel condenses a pitch to seven questions. Answer each in a sentence or two of plain English. The answers below are for an invented company, Waitfill.

Seibel's question	A strong answer sounds like
What do you do?	Waitfill texts the patients on a clinic's waiting list the moment someone cancels.
How big is the market?	Our first two countries have about 40,000 clinics. At 600 dollars a year each, that's a 24-million-dollar market.
What's your progress?	We launched in March. Sixty clinics pay us today, up from twenty in June.
What's your unique insight?	Clinics don't need more patients. They need to fill last-minute cancellations.
What's your business model?	Clinics pay 50 dollars a month, with no setup fee.
Who's on your team?	There are two of us, both full time. I ran a clinic's front desk for five years, and my cofounder built hospital booking software.
What do you want?	We're raising 400,000 dollars to reach 500 clinics by the end of next year.

Seibel's "Email Test": write two sentences on what your startup does, email them to a smart friend, and ask the friend to explain it back in different words. If they ask a clarifying question, revise the pitch.

Investor questions after a startup pitch, and what they mean

The investor says	It means	You could answer
What's your moat?	What stops a competitor from copying you?	We plug into each clinic's booking system, so switching away from us is a lot of work.
What's your burn rate, and how much runway do you have?	How much cash do you spend a month, and how many months will it last?	We burn about 12,000 dollars a month, which gives us nine months of runway.
Walk me through your unit economics.	What do you earn from one customer, and what does winning one cost?	Each clinic pays us 600 dollars a year and costs us about 150 dollars to sign up.
Who's on your cap table?	Who owns the company, and how much does each person own?	The two founders own 95 percent, and one angel investor owns the rest.
What keeps you up at night?	What worries you most?	Hiring. We need a second engineer before we take on bigger clinics.
It's a bit early for us.	Often a polite no, at least for now.	I understand. What would you need to see to take another look?

Y Combinator's "A Guide to Seed Fundraising" warns that investors have "a lot of different ways to say no." "Keep me posted" and "Let's stay in touch" can be two more, so ask what the next step is before you leave.

How to say your startup's numbers out loud

A misheard number changes your pitch: 15 percent growth is not 50. Y Combinator's "A Guide to Demo Day Presentations" tells founders to speak "unnaturally slowly" and to speak clearly, "especially if you are not presenting in your native tongue."

1.2M is "one point two million." Decimals take "point" in English, never "comma."
20% MoM is "twenty percent month over month"; YoY is "year over year."
3x is "three x," or say "tripled." Avoid "grew three times," which can mean on three occasions.
13 or 30? Stress the end of thir-TEEN and the start of THIR-ty. For a key number, add the digits: "fifteen percent, that's one five."
B2B SaaS is "B to B sass." If a listener may not know an abbreviation, say the words: "customer acquisition cost," not "CAC."

Startup pitch mistakes in English, and what to say instead

Instead of	Say	Why
We are an AI-powered platform that revolutionizes clinic operations.	We help clinics fill last-minute cancellations.	Seibel says to cut jargon, acronyms, marketing speak and ambiguous terms such as "platform."
We have no competitors.	Right now, clinics do this by phone, or not at all.	Customers nearly always have an alternative, even if it is doing nothing. Sequoia Capital's business plan guide asks for direct and indirect competitors.
The market is very huge.	It's a 24-million-dollar market.	"Huge" already means "very big," so "very huge" sounds wrong. A number is more convincing anyway.
Our customers are growing fast.	Our customer base is growing fast.	The first can mean that the customers' own businesses are growing, not that you have more customers.
We are looking for a fund of four hundred thousands dollars.	We're raising four hundred thousand dollars.	A fund is the investor's pool of money; founders raise money or funding. After a number, "thousand" takes no -s.

Rehearse your startup pitch with Airi: what to say to her

The free credits cover about eight minutes: enough for a one-minute pitch and a few hard questions. Time yourself on your phone.

Set the scene: "You're a seed investor who has never heard of my company. Listen to my one-minute pitch, then tell me in one sentence what we do."
If she describes a different company, simplify your first line and pitch again.
Say: "Now ask me about my market, progress, business model and team, one question at a time."
Raise the pressure: "Be more skeptical. Ask about my moat, runway and unit economics, and push back if an answer is vague."
When a small fix appears, repeat the whole sentence correctly before you go on.
Close the way you would in the room: "We're raising 400,000 dollars. Could we schedule a follow-up call next week?"

How to get the most from it

Nail the one-liner

One sentence that says what you do and for whom. Practice it until it's effortless.

Drill the hard questions

Market size, competition, unit economics, why now. Ask Airi to grill you.

Say numbers confidently

Practice stating your metrics out loud without hesitation — they're your strongest card.

Start speaking today

Your first 600 credits are free — no credit card. Sign in and have your first conversation with Airi.

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Frequently asked questions

Can Airi play a tough investor?

Yes. Ask her to be skeptical and she'll push on your market, competition, and numbers so you practice staying composed.

Can I rehearse a demo day pitch?

Yes. Tell Airi how long your slot is, start a timer on your phone, and deliver the pitch out loud. Then ask her to tell you what your company does and what you asked for, and to question you the way an investor would.

Is my pitch confidential?

Treat Airi like any online service. Your conversations are saved with your account so she can pick up where you left off, they are processed by the AI providers that run the service, and you can ask us to delete them at any time. If your deck includes figures or names you can't share yet, rehearse with placeholders: the English you practice is the same. The privacy policy has the details.

What questions do investors ask after a pitch?

In a Y Combinator post, Michael Seibel lists seven things a pitch should cover: what you do, how big the market is, your progress, your unique insight, your business model, your team, and what you want. Expect questions on any of them you skipped or left vague, and on your competitors, what it costs to win a customer, and how long your cash will last.

How long should a startup pitch be?

It depends on the room. For a full investor meeting, Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule is ten slides, no more than twenty minutes, and no font smaller than thirty points. Demo days and pitch competitions set their own time limits, so check the rules, then prepare three versions: one sentence, one minute, and the full pitch.

Do I need perfect English to pitch to investors?

You need clear English, not perfect English. Y Combinator's Demo Day guide gives every founder the same two instructions: speak slowly and speak clearly. Use short sentences and plain words, say your numbers carefully, and rehearse the questions as much as the pitch.

Last updated: 2026-10-03