Cinematic Secrets of a Great Pitch

The Art of Gaining Trust and Sparking Emotion Through Storytelling

Part 1

One of the most unsettling scenes in Get Out features Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) at a garden party hosted by his girlfriend’s family. As he mingles with the guests, he quickly senses that something isn’t right. Everyone is too polite, almost performative, and beneath the smiles there’s a strange tension, as if they’re all in on a secret he doesn’t know.

The unique blend of horror, comedy and satire is Jordan Peele’s signature writing and directing style, but investors did not know that when he first pitched the idea for Get Out. Even when they agreed to let him write it, there was no assurance he would direct since he never directed a film before. Once he finished the script, he recognized that his pitch had to accomplish two things: convince producers the idea was worth backing, and show that he was the only person who could bring it to life. In pitching, that second part often gets overlooked. Whether you're pitching a movie, a business, or a product, your goal is the same: to get others to believe in your idea and support it. But it's not just about the idea—it's about showing them that you are the one who can bring it to life. So, what can the world of movie pitching teach us about making any kind of pitch more convincing?

Pitching is Storytelling

Let’s be honest: most people hate pitching. Filmmakers want to make films, not decks. Founders want to build, not sell. But unless you’re independently wealthy, ideas rarely come to life without getting others on board. The pitch is your first real act of leadership. Great business leaders, like Steve Jobs, didn’t just pitch products. Jobs told stories, and made his vision so concrete you could just feel it. When he launched a new product, he didn’t lead with technical specs—he led with imagination. He understood something simple: people hate being sold to, but they love a good story.

Even in situations where selling is expected we instinctively recoil when someone pushes too hard. No one likes meeting someone who, despite their charm, seems to have a hidden agenda. Take buying a car, for example. You might walk into a dealership fully intending to make a purchase, but an overly pushy salesperson can still make the experience uncomfortable. Dating is similar. When two people meet with the goal of learning more about each other, they often act as if the meeting isn't just about sizing one another up for a relationship. In stories, we like to pretend as if we are not reading a book or watching a movie. Researchers call this kind of deep engagement Narrative Transportation Theory—when people get so caught up in a story that they forget about the real world and fully step into the character’s journey. Researchers at Ohio State University found that this kind of transportation plays a key role in shifting people’s beliefs and opinions, which makes storytelling especially valuable when you're trying to pitch an idea.

Pitches come in many forms. When you launch a product, you're pitching it to potential customers. Even a job interview is a kind of pitch—you're presenting yourself and your value. Here, we’re focusing on one of the most intimidating types of pitches: the investor pitch. Even in this setting, you can create Narrative Transportation. But to do that, you need to avoid one of the most common traps founders fall into when pitching their business: leaning too much on a slide deck. Just like lighting and camera angles support a film’s story but aren’t the story themselves, slides are visual aids—not the pitch. Jumping into slides before you’ve nailed down your message can, at best, slow you down—and at worst, send you completely off track. The truth is, slides aren’t essential for a strong story, even if they are expected when meeting investors. A great stand-up routine doesn't need slides, and neither does a spooky story told by the fire. What really matters is the storyteller. So, set PowerPoint aside for now. We’ll come back to slides, and how they can actually help, a little later.

Transporting Your Audience

At its core, a pitch is simply a message meant to inspire action. That means we’re always pitching—whether we’re asking for a raise or trying to convince a friend to watch our favorite movie. And in those everyday situations, we naturally do something we often skip in formal pitches: we shape the message around the listener and what they care about. So before you ask, “What do I want from my audience?”, start by asking, “What are they actually looking for when they walk into this meeting?”

Imagine you could ask a group of investors that question—how do you think they would answer? Maybe they’d say, “A big return on my investment.” But that answer needs a closer look. In filmmaking, we often separate what a character wants from what they truly need. Take The Devil Wears Prada, where Andy (played by Anne Hathaway), wants to be a successful journalist so bad, that she’d sacrifice her values, personal style, and relationships. But by the end of the film, she discovers what she actually needs: integrity and her own idea of success. People are the same—we might know what we want, but not always what we really need. So what do your investors want, and what do they actually need?

If we assume investors only care about returns, we’ll likely fill our pitch with charts and graphs to show the venture’s financial potential, and many pitches do exactly that. But founders who take this approach are often surprised when their message doesn’t land, even though it seems to match what investors say they want. You need a different approach to dig deeper, beyond what your audience says they want, and uncover what they truly need. Instead of asking what they want, imagine asking your investors why they wanted to become investors in the first place. The answer likely has little to do with products, innovation, or even money. More often, it’s driven by emotion rather than logic. Many investors are looking to build something meaningful or be part of something big and successful. But first, they need to believe in the vision. They need to feel confident, excited, and curious. When those emotions are there, the technical details start to matter much less. Emotions are the gateway into Narrative Transportation.

The Storytelling Power of Emotion

Studies of the human brain show that emotions and memory are closely linked. When we feel something, we remember it. Even negative emotions can leave a strong impression, though you probably don’t want to be remembered as the pitch that made people laugh for the wrong reasons.

When an audience connects emotionally with a story or character, they care about the outcome, and this makes them more likely to stay engaged to see how it unfolds. That’s why moving your audience is not the same as simply delivering information, and this difference can completely change how you approach your pitch. But how do we create these kinds of emotions in our audience? We’ve already begun learning what makes them tick—now we need to understand them even better by asking how they ended up in in front of you in the first place. What we’re exploring is called conditioning, which constantly shapes how we see and make sense of the world around us. A crowd at a stand-up club expects to laugh. A horror movie audience arrives anticipating jump scares. If you swapped the settings but kept the same audiences, people may feel confused or frustrated. Similarly, we first need to understand what our audience has been conditioned to expect from you.

This might seem complex at first, but it’s actually a reassuring process. You don’t need to speak to everyone—just the people in your audience. Others who don’t connect with your message aren’t the ones you need to spend energy trying to reach. So take a moment and ask yourself: how did the people you’re pitching to even come to meet with you? Most people take the effort to attend something because they feel some level of familiarity or trust. In movies, that might mean buying a ticket because they like a certain director, or actor. In a pitch, it could be that the investor knows you personally, or trusts someone who does. Alternatively, familiarity could be with the subject matter or location—like when you speak at an accelerator or within an industry space, which signals shared context. Familiarity creates trust, and knowing how much trust you already have is key to designing your pitch. With Get Out, for example, Jordan Peele saw that while producers believed in the concept, they didn’t yet trust him to direct it. That was the obstacle he needed to overcome.
‍
At first glance, it may seem difficult to engage people who don’t know you well and haven’t built trust in you yet. But the answer lies in your own experience, after all people try to get your attention every day. So what makes you pause and listen?

Our conditioning as we navigate the world drives us to notice information that feels relevant to our survival. In today’s world, survival often means anything that helps (or hinders) our success. This is why the two most important elements in any story are character and transformation. We experience stories through characters in a process called identification, where a character’s success or failure feels personal to us. Many founders assume they, or their customers, should be the main character in an investor pitch. But that isn’t always the best choice. As the storyteller, your job is to introduce a character who closely reflects your audience. In some cases, it’s more effective to make the audience the character at the center of the story. When the character can’t reach their goal, transformation (a deep change) becomes necessary, and happens as a result of the story’s events. Think of Andy in The Devil Wears Prada or Neo in The Matrix—they make decisions, come to realizations, or discover something new about themselves. That’s the kind of transformation you offer your character in a pitch. When he story resonates, your audience feels that emotional payoff. And that’s what inspires action.

In a conversation with a gaming startup founder pitching his ideas, I suggested he start with a quick story and a subtle emotional hook. I suggested he open his pitch like this: “Before we begin, something happened yesterday that perfectly captures everything we’re about to talk about, and I just have to share it with you.” By framing his story outside the pitch, it catches attention (but of course, the pitch has already started). He would then go on to describe visiting a friend whose child was lying on the carpet, playing a video game. “The kid seemed bored, just going through the motions. So I asked him, If you had [xyz], would you…”—and just like that, the conversation shifted into a user story that promised a meaningful outcome. In this case, it was about a sense of frustration with the “client,” followed by spark of enthusiasm by the founder—the emotional moment when a problem meets a solution. If delivered in a way that genuinely moves the storyteller, it can move your audience too. The next step is the shift to scale: “Now imagine that experience for millions.”

Building More Trust

When a story lands, it creates the coveted Narrative Transportation, where your audience is mesmerized. But to get there, trust is essential. People won't open up to a storyteller unless they feel safe doing so. And unless you’re pitching to your mother, you only have a short window at the beginning to make an emotional connection. If you miss it, your audience will mentally check out—just like they would during a slow movie. That’s why the beginning of a pitch is so important. It's just like the opening of a good story: it pulls people in or loses them. If this sounds tricky, don’t worry. Even the storytelling masters didn’t start out that way. They learned it. And so can you.

When I pitched my EdTech startup Quonder, I met with investors who I knew already had some general connection to education. So I opened with a question: “Think of the best teacher you’ve ever had. What made them so great?” It wasn’t just a conversation starter. It was a way to pull my audience into their own memories and emotions—ones I could connect to our product’s vision. Was it risky? Sure. One person once told me they hated all their teachers. But most people lit up. And once they shared those stories, I could build on that emotional moment to do three things: first, establish trust by showing that I understood and related to their experience; second, establish authority by explaining a core principle; and third, connect it to our business model.

Starting with a question isn’t magic. But it can do more than evoke emotion and trust: it gives you real-time insight. And that insight lets you use a technique called associative chaining—linking new ideas to familiar ones. When people connect a memory to your pitch, they remember it longer, and feel more invested. It is yet another technique to stand out, in addition to evoking emotions.

Some readers might find it intimidating to hear that a pitch should be adapted to each audience. Many people prefer to stick to a script, but that approach misses the point of knowing who you're speaking to. If your pitch can be delivered automatically, then why not just send it as a video? If you’re in the room, it’s because presence matters, and engaging the audience usually makes a real difference. Ironically, adapting your pitch to your audience doesn’t mean you shouldn’t memorize key parts. Actors memorize all their lines—not to repeat them mechanically, but so they can focus on the moment without worrying about the words. That frees them up to listen to their scene partners and react with feeling. In the same way, memorizing parts of your pitch helps you stay flexible and adjust as needed. One of the most important parts to rehearse is the beginning of your pitch, when you have just a few moments to create an emotional connection and build trust.

From Story to Business

Movies, and stories in general, are all a form of emotional guidance. When we watch a film, we willingly step into a fictional world and let the storyteller lead us through it. We set aside our everyday thoughts—that’s Narrative Transportation. The same can be true for people attending your pitch. If you manage to earn their trust and move them emotionally, they won’t mind being led. They’ll even welcome it.

To deliver a compelling pitch that truly transports your audience, focus first on the emotional journey, not the slides. Work on your these last, and keep all your information handy for that magical moment when someone leans in and asks, “How do you plan to make this happen?” But before that, your job is to earn their trust. Get to know your audience. Understand what excites them, what they value, and why they’re even in the room. That familiarity allows you to create emotional resonance, and when you tap into shared memories or beliefs, you unlock associative chaining and make your pitch stick. Memorize key moments in your story, like an actor learns lines; not to recite them robotically, but so you can stay present and adapt. Because the best pitches aren’t monologues. They’re conversations. And the most successful ones don’t just inform. They move people.

In Part 2, we’ll move beyond the opening moments of a pitch and dive into structure, slide design, and other techniques that help make your message memorable.