How Do You Fit Years of Obsession Into Two Minutes… Without Losing the Room?

BARA - Illustration - female founder pitch night

Last Thursday I was at Female Founder Pitch Night at Fishburners.

A room full of brave founders.Clear vision. Real depth. Ideas that genuinely mattered.

There’s something powerful about watching someone stand up and compress months — sometimes years — of work into a few minutes.

I go to rooms like this intentionally.

I like rooms where people are brave enough to be judged for something they care about.

As a product designer — and a founder — pitch nights are my favourite kind of live UX test.

You can feel in seconds whether a story lands… or drifts.Whether the room leans in… or starts scanning the slides.

And that’s fascinating.

The Real Challenge Isn’t Intelligence

What struck me wasn’t the quality of thinking.

The ideas were strong.

The founders were thoughtful.

The emotional investment was obvious.

The real challenge was translation.

Translating depth into clarity.Translating immersion into structure.Translating obsession into signal.

Some founders were so deeply inside their product you could feel the emotional weight behind it. That part is beautiful. That’s real.

But when the deck becomes crowded…When there are too many words…When each slide tries to carry the full complexity of the idea…

The audience has to choose:

Do I read?

Or do I listen?

They can’t do both well.

And once cognitive load rises, connection quietly drops.

Not because the idea is weak.

Because the signal is diluted.

It’s Not About Simplifying. It’s About Sharpening.

I say this with respect — because I’m building too.

I know how brutal it is to compress something you care about into a strict time box.

It’s not about dumbing it down.

It’s about sharpening it.

In investor settings especially:

• Decide what truly matters — and yes, have the courage to remove the rest.

• Design each slide as a signal, not a storage unit.

• Use visuals as anchors, not explanations.

• Let the headline do the framing. Let your voice carry the depth.

• If it can be said in five words instead of fifty, choose five.

Clarity doesn’t remove depth.

It makes space for it.

Why Rooms Like This Matter

Pitch nights are a privilege to witness.

Watching founders refine their story over time is one of the most hopeful things in the startup ecosystem.

You see the evolution.You see the sharpening.You see the confidence grow.

And sometimes the kindest thing we can do for a strong idea… is help it breathe.

I’ll be around.

🤍