After 17 years and 1100+ startup pitches, here’s one truth I keep coming back to: using industry-specific jargon in your pitch is a gamble—and it’s rarely worth it.
Founders often use it to sound smart, credible, or “on the inside.” But the moment you say something like “we use a zero-knowledge proof mechanism for trustless verification”, you might as well say: “we’re okay with you not understanding us.”
The harsh reality?
A confused investor doesn’t ask for clarity—they just pass.
I've watched amazing ideas fail, not because they weren’t fundable, but because they were unreachable. And I get it—founders fear sounding too simplistic. They worry: “Will they think I’m not technical enough?” But in a short pitch, it’s impossible to make someone feel stupid.
What’s far more likely is that you will lose them.
The Fear of Sounding Too Simple
Founders think they need to speak the language of their industry. Especially in deep tech or medtech, jargon feels like table stakes.
But here’s what I’ve seen again and again:
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“We use deep phenotyping and omics-based clustering to identify rare subpopulations.”
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“We’re enabling tokenized cap table liquidity through decentralized governance.”
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“We built a full-stack synthetic data engine for federated model training.”
None of these are wrong. But they leave 90% of your audience nodding politely—and checking out.
The pattern?
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Founders overestimate what others know
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They assume jargon will signal competence
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They fear that plain language sounds weak
But here's the truth: a pitch is about clarity, not complexity. If the goal is to be remembered, repeated, and invested in—why take the risk?
Have you ever assumed someone understood, only to realize too late they didn’t? Would you bet your funding on that assumption?
Clarity Is Strength
Here’s what I recommend to every founder I coach: skip the jargon—always.
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Explained “federated learning” as “training AI without moving sensitive patient data” (avoided technical risk)
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Swapped “tokenized liquidity” with “making shares easier to sell, securely” (prioritized comprehension)
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Said “an AI that understands images and text” instead of “multi-modal LLM” (earned trust through clarity)
And when investors do want to dive deeper? That’s what Q&A is for.
In fact, in fields like medtech, it’s common for investors to throw in jargon deliberately in Q&A—to see if you know your stuff. And that’s the time to show fluency. But don’t lead with it. Don’t risk it.
Clarity builds confidence. Jargon builds distance. The pitch isn’t the place to gamble.
Founders who dropped the jargon saw real, fast results:
Why it worked:
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Investors instantly understood the value
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Clarity led to better questions, not fewer
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Simplicity made them feel smarter, not dumber
The pitch opened the door. The Q&A proved the depth.
The Bottom Line
Jargon is a shortcut—but one with a high failure rate. Your pitch is too short, too valuable, and too risky to let misunderstanding sneak in.
Reflect on your own pitch:
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Where do you assume people understand?
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Can every sentence be repeated by a non-expert?
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Would your 12-year-old nephew get the problem you’re solving?
Never assume. Never gamble. Make it land.
Your job isn’t to sound smart. It’s to make others feel smart enough to say yes.