The word 'pitch' is a little overloaded in my experience. Some people use it to mean 'product demo' and others use it to mean 'investor presentation'. I'd say m

The word 'pitch' is a little overloaded in my experience. Some people use it to mean 'product demo' and others use it to mean 'investor presentation'. I'd say most of these were product/company demos aimed at the press and potential customers, with a sprinkling of investor hookage, as in 'if you're an investor think this is cool talk to us to find out more about the business side'. There's absolutely nothing wrong with demoing the product as a first step to getting an investor's interest, but a lot of the 'pitch training' or 'how to pitch your startup' type posts, seminars, workshops etc focus on what an investor wants to hear. Which is also called a pitch. One of the most common mistakes to make during this type of pitch (based on my experience, er, making said mistake) is to talk way too much about the product and tech and not enough about how the investor is going to get rich and retire to the Bahamas if they invest in you. Of course this varies tremendously by investor. The "pitch" at a YC interview is not going to start off with "Well, our total available market is $25 billion, and...". The reason I mention this is because the two types of pitch are just commonly confused. For example at FOWA London, there was a pitching session on stage where three companies did a product pitch to the audience (the session was called Launch! iirc) and the judges made comments as if it were an investor pitch, which was a little unfair on the companies. They all took it gracefully, though. tl;dr - Pitch can mean more than one thing. Know your audience (and judges if necessary)!