8 tests your pitch won’t pass (yet)

Your slides are clean. Your vision is bold. But beneath the surface, investors still aren’t buying it. These 8 tests will show you why—and how to fix it before your next investor call.

Hey friends 👋

This is Founding with AI, where every other week we show you how to use AI to validate faster, pitch smarter, and build what the market actually wants.

After a long hiatus, we’re back — and coming out swinging.

In this issue, we’re dropping the same brutal diagnostic we use inside the Traction Lab to tear apart early-stage startup pitches and surface the risks most founders can’t (or won’t) see — but investors do.

We call it the 8 Ts.

It’s fast, and it’s ruthless.

And today, we’re giving you the AI prompt to run it on your own startup — no filters, no fluff.

Let’s go 👇

Before we get into the prompt and how to use it, we need to put it in context, so:

Let’s talk venture science.

At the Traction Lab, we treat startups as hypotheses to be tested — not bets to be blindly backed.

We use structured experimentation to reduce uncertainty across every dimension of the venture — which we call the 8 Ts of Fundability.

It’s science.

And it informs how we hear founders pitch to us.

Most investors listen for what they want to believe.

We listen for what we can validate.

That means fewer questions like “How big could this get?” and more like “What’s the next test you’re running to prove it’s real?”

Less what you think, more what you can prove.

But if you’ve spent time at all hearing pitches (I’ve heard thousands), you’ll know that reality looks a bit different:

Most pitches are… polished fiction.

But the 8 Ts is how we drag your startup back into reality — using actual risk analysis, not vibes. It’s the fastest way to spot where you’re fundable, and where you’re just faking it, so you can develop an evidence-based way to de-risk it.

So, just what the hell are the 8 Ts?

“The 8 Ts of Fundability” is our internal framework at the Traction Lab for assessing fundability. It works across verticals, across stages, and especially across founder delusions.

Here’s a quick list (longer definitions are in the prompt):

1. Team – Do you have the crew to pull this off? No tourists.

2. TAM – Are you playing in a big market with a clear wedge?

3. Timing – Why now? Why not three years ago — or three years from now?

4. Traction – What actual market evidence have you gathered so far?

5. Technology – Can you actually build this?

6. Theory – Is there a compelling narrative for how this becomes huge?

7. Terms – Do you have a credible ask, milestone, and use of funds?

8. Tracking – Are you measuring what matters, or just running on hope?

I wrote a whole article about these over on Traction Thinking.

We use it to break pitches apart — and now, so can you.

Bring out the prompt.

We usually run this analysis during a live pitch session. But with this prompt, you can do it with your own inputs — and your most under-utilized co-founder.

Here’s the AI prompt — adapted straight from the one we use inside the Traction Lab. Feed it a transcript of your pitch along with your deck (or a bullet-point summary if you’re short on time), and it will break your startup down across all 8 Ts — with no fluff.

And no mercy.

It’ll work with your favourite LLM, but the screenshots and examples are taken from ChatGPT using GPT-4o.

Here’s the prompt: