Last week, we attended the Manchester regional final of SeedLegals The Pitch 2026, the UK and Ireland’s largest founder pitching competition, hosted alongside Barclays Eagle Labs and DISH Manchester.
Ten founders.
Ninety seconds each.
Three investors.
It was a sharp reminder that when time is limited and the stakes are high, storytelling stops being a “nice to have” and becomes the deciding factor.
The real challenge: communicating vision at speed
At its core, the night was about one question: How do you tell the most compelling story in the shortest possible time?
A 90-second pitch leaves no room for over-explaining, hiding behind slides, or assuming prior knowledge. As Antony Rose of SeedLegals put it, the goal of a pitch is not to tell the whole story. It’s to make someone want to hear the next chapter.
The strongest pitches followed a simple structure:
- Something is broken
- It doesn’t make sense
- This is how we’re fixing it
- This is what we do
- This is why our team can deliver
Names and company names, clearly stated at the beginning and the end, mattered more than clever turns of phrase.
What investors are actually listening for
The investor panel brought clarity to what often feels opaque to founders.
Ranvir Singh, Senior Investment Manager at GC Angels, spoke about early-stage investment across Greater Manchester, with cheques ranging from £50k to £1.5m. His message was clear: pitching is a step, not a guarantee. What matters most is being hooked early.
He wants to understand:
- Who you are as a founder
- Why you’re credible
- Evidence that people want what you’re building
- A sense of momentum and urgency
- How much you’re raising and what it unlocks
Traction does not have to mean revenue. It can mean engagement, waitlists, early users, or signals of demand.
From Mercia Ventures, the emphasis was on timing and relevance. Why this problem? Why now? Why you? And then, traction. The parallels with PR were impossible to miss.
Ben Davies of PXN Ventures talked about balance. Investors look for founders with energy, magnetism and urgency, but grounded in realism and competence. Someone who can influence stakeholders to join them, while still rolling up their sleeves when things get difficult.
The traction myth (and what really de-risks a business)
A recurring theme throughout the evening was the persistent myth that early-stage investors only care about revenue. They don’t. Revenue is an output.
What really matters for early stage businesses:
- Growth potential and growth rate
- Engagement and usage
- Net Promoter Score
- Letters of intent
- Time spent on product or site
- Evidence of repeat behaviour
Customers sit at the centre of everything. It’s not about what founders think is good. It’s about what users respond to.
Several speakers referenced the Y Combinator principle: build something that isn’t scalable, find customers who love it, and let that love show up in the data.
Solo founders, teams and the emotional load
SeedLegals data shows that teams of two founders tend to raise more, and faster, than solo founders. That doesn’t mean solo founders can’t succeed, but investors are conscious of the emotional and operational load involved.
You don’t need a co-founder on the cap table from day one, but you do need support. Building a company gets harder once investment enters the picture, not easier. Investors want confidence that the load is shared.
As one speaker put it, fundraising is a dating process. You don’t rush into marriage.
Underrepresented founders and access to capital
The conversation around access to funding was honest. Around 2% of venture capital still goes to female founders, and historical data reflects deep imbalances. At the same time, there are genuine efforts underway to change this.
Many funds are actively backing underrepresented founders. Public funding, grants and accelerator programmes exist specifically to de-risk early-stage businesses. The onus is on founders to seek them out and use them strategically.
Money may be faceless, but bias is real. Awareness is growing, and so are the routes in.
The biggest takeaway: this was a lesson in PR
What stood out most across the night was how closely investor expectations aligned with the fundamentals of good PR.
Again and again, it came back to the same questions:
- What is it?
- Why does it matter?
- Why is it different?
- Why should anyone care?
- Why now?
Pitching is not about performance. It’s about narrative discipline.
If a founder can’t explain their value clearly and simply in 90 seconds, it’s rarely a funding problem. It’s a communication one.
In that sense, the SeedLegals Pitch could easily have doubled as a masterclass in PR.
Why this matters beyond fundraising
Founders don’t just pitch to investors. They pitch to customers, partners, hires, journalists and stakeholders every day. The ability to land a story quickly, clearly and with conviction is what carries a business forward.
That’s why we believe storybuilding isn’t a marketing exercise. It’s a strategic one.
If you can pitch to any room, any audience, and any level of knowledge, you build momentum that compounds far beyond a single funding round.
We have worked with many founders, entrepreneurs and tech and innovation companies helping them to distill their USP and tell their story to audiences that matter. A great place to start is our Storybuilding workshop.
Or you could contact us today to help tell your story.