Every founder eventually faces the same terrifying five minutes: the pitch. This week's Summer Launchpad workshop tackled it head-on with David Isaacs (Gallatin ‘99), who spent 18 years at R/GA before co-founding R/GA Ventures, where he helped shape the pitches and brand stories of over 260 portfolio companies. He's now at Amazon working on generative AI and imagery.

He opened the session with an observation from his new world at Amazon, where meetings famously start not with a deck, but with 25 minutes of silent document reading. It's a culture built entirely around substance over spectacle, and it set the tone for everything that followed: he wanted the room to think and act like founders, not students.

You are the presentation, not your slides

The single idea David kept circling back to: the deck is not the presentation. You are. He compared it to a kid's show-and-tell, where the object in their hands isn't really the point, it's what grounds the child enough to tell the story. A deck works the same way. It gives the presenter a crutch and gives the audience an anchor, but the energy in the room has to come from the person talking, not the slide behind them. That effort isn't wasted on the slides themselves, it's a signal of respect for the audience you're about to stand in front of.

He also reset expectations about what a pitch is even supposed to accomplish. Nobody's writing a check in the middle of a pitch. The only job of a good pitch is to make someone want to learn more, not to turn them into an instant expert on your business. A good pitch just earns you the next conversation.

Every pitch is a story, and every story has a shape

David walked through a common pitch skeleton: intro, problem and solution, the idea plus why your team is credible, execution and roadmap, the ask, and the close. But he was careful to note that the structure is just scaffolding. What makes a pitch land is finding what's genuinely distinctive about your company and building the story around that, not forcing your story into someone else's template.

Every story, he said, needs two things: a real point of view and a clear structure, a beginning, a middle, and an end. Even your elevator pitch should follow that same arc, just compressed down. And openings matter more than founders think. He offered a few reliable ways in: start with a personal story, lead with a surprising fact, or open by contradicting conventional wisdom. Be memorable.

Even a "boring" business idea can open strong. David shared an example from a founder building a checklist company out of Germany, hardly the sexiest pitch on paper, who opened with "the power of the checklist," then wove in their founder story and the problem in under a minute.

"The fact that you chose to build this is inherently interesting."

Simple wins, every time

If there was one line meant to stick, it was this: simple really works. Audiences don't need to become experts in your business during a five-minute pitch, they just need enough to get excited. David described a density spectrum: a deck you send ahead of time can carry more information, but a live presentation should lean much simpler. If someone in the audience is squinting to read your slide, they've already stopped listening to you.

His process advice: go from complex to simple before you ever think about making something look pretty. A clean circle diagram beats a cluttered market map every time, even if the circle diagram took more discipline to get there. Aesthetics matter, but that complex-to-simple move matters more.

Nobody nails it on the first try

David was candid that no founder builds a great pitch deck in one sitting. Every founder he's worked with has a folder somewhere with dozens of versions of the same deck. His recommended process: start messy. Get everything down first, on paper, on a whiteboard, in a plain document, not in slide software, then erase down from there. Build the ugly version, practice it out loud, and only then refine.

He also pointed to AI agents as a genuinely useful part of that process now, feeding in scattered notes and content to get a cohesive first outline faster, then iterating from there. His rule of thumb: 80 percent of your energy should go into the content itself, the actual ingredients of the story. Preparation and delivery follow naturally once the content is right.

Delivering with confidence

On the practical side, David offered a handful of tips for founders prepping for demo day and beyond. Being clear and direct beats trying to cover everything: a pitch delivered well at 60 percent of your material lands better than one rushed through at 100 percent. He recommended practicing standing up, since it naturally projects your voice and mirrors how confident you'll need to look on an actual demo day stage.

For anyone pitching over Zoom, his advice was to look at the green dot near your camera, not your own face on screen, and keep notes close to that dot so your eyeline doesn't drift. Frame yourself from the sternum to one hand above your head. Present in a room with soft furnishings like carpet or couches, since hard surfaces create echo. Bounce a lamp off a wall for softer lighting instead of shooting it straight at your face. And if possible, use a second screen for your notes and a timer.

On nerves, his reassurance was simple: nobody in the room knows your pitch better than you do. If you stumble, just keep going.

When two founders share the stage

David's default recommendation is one presenter delivering a five-minute pitch. The exception is when the business itself is fundamentally about a two-person dynamic, in which case having both founders on stage actually reinforces the story. If two people are up there, the one not speaking should step slightly back, stay attentive, and nod subtly rather than compete for focus. A mic handoff can also signal the transition between speakers naturally. His note on body language: avoid pacing, and keep your hands clasped behind your back or at your sides, since that reads as calm rather than nervous.

Founder takeaways

• You are the presentation. The deck supports you, it doesn't replace you.
• A pitch's only job is to earn the next conversation, not to close the deal on the spot.
• Every pitch needs a real point of view and a clear beginning, middle, and end.
• Simple wins. If your slide needs squinting, you've already lost the room.
• Treat your pre-read deck and your live deck as two different artifacts, dense versus simple.
• Nobody gets it right the first time. Start messy, then erase down.
• Practice standing up, look at the green dot on Zoom, and keep going if you stumble.

David closed with a challenge worth carrying into demo day prep: try both a "vision" version of your pitch and a "wedge" version, record yourself delivering each, and see which one actually lands.