The worst pitch I have ever seen was at an energy tech conference last year in Houston, Texas. Honestly, I don't even remember the product or service that it was for. But that's not what made it bad.
You can make a lot of mistakes on a pitch. Your numbers can be off. You can get the size of your market wrong. You can slip up and not have your presentation slides work. You can have the sound cut out. You can run way under time.
Things like that happen and you can get away with it. But there is one thing that you cannot get away with. And it's this:
Being someone that no one wants to talk to.
That's what happened on this pitch. The guy giving the pitch was a complete grouch. He didn't explain anything about his business, he spoke for half a minute, and tried to make it seem that if anyone were to work with him and his team that they, the audience member, would be the lucky one. You just wouldn't want to work with someone like that no matter what. Some people are beyond being simply disagreeable. They are miserable to work with.
As a startup lawyer I've seen pitches of all types. You name it. I've seen it. I've seen poorly rehearsed pitches, extremely well-prepared pitches--everything. I've seen some that are feel very natural, some that don't feel natural at all, etc. But this was on another level of poorly done. It turned off the entire crowd.
So don't make the same mistake.
Yes, disagreeable people can and often do succeed. But that's not what we're talking about. Yes, assholes succeed. Did you see my article about one of the most, if not the most, successful entrepreneur/investor of all time? It's an ultimately unfulfilling way of doing business by the way.
But from the very first pitch? Yeah. Be someone that other people will actually want to talk to.