What Does Your Pitch Actually Prove?

The rules in full

How the self-check decides

The same choices always give the same result. The rules below are applied in order, and the first that fits gives the description. The commercial unknown and the next test then follow from the claim and that description, along the report's route from business claim to next commercial test.

Contradicted You say you hold evidence that points the other way. The self-check never assumes this.
Hypothesis or intention Your evidence is something your team expects or believes: a planned channel, a forecast, a market-size estimate, or your own conviction, expertise or demonstration.
Directly observed Your evidence records the market response the claim is about, as listed for each claim below.
Supported but limited Your evidence records a real, related market response that establishes less than the claim, as listed for each claim below.
Not established Anything else: no evidence yet, investor interest, or evidence that answers a different question.

For each claim, which evidence counts as directly observed and which as supported but limited:

Buyers have the problem we solve

The question it answers: Who has demonstrated the problem? Can we point to specific buyers or users who independently described a costly, frequent or urgent problem? How were they selected? What would contradict our hypothesis?

Directly observed: Interviews in which buyers described the problem; A pilot, trial, letter of intent or other commitment; A signed contract or a total contract value; Payments received and recorded as your company's own revenue; A measured repeat, renewal or retention rate from your own records
Supported but limited: Sign-ups, a waitlist, downloads or active users; Money passing through your platform (transaction value); A route to buyers you have tested, with a measured conversion rate or sales cycle
Contradicted: Only if you say you hold it: buyers we asked did not describe this problem as costly, frequent or urgent.

In the report: Section 11: Six commercial questions a founder can use immediately

Buyers will commit to what we offer

The question it answers: What customer action has actually occurred? Was there an interview, waitlist sign-up, pilot agreement, activation, repeat use, payment or renewal? Each action has a different meaning. Which one do we currently have?

Directly observed: A pilot, trial, letter of intent or other commitment; A route to buyers you have tested, with a measured conversion rate or sales cycle; A measured repeat, renewal or retention rate from your own records; A signed contract or a total contract value; Money passing through your platform (transaction value); Payments received and recorded as your company's own revenue
Supported but limited: Interviews in which buyers described the problem; Sign-ups, a waitlist, downloads or active users
Contradicted: Only if you say you hold it: buyers we asked declined to commit, sign or try it.

In the report: Section 11: Six commercial questions a founder can use immediately

We earn money from customers

The question it answers: What money did the company earn? If we use a financial figure, is it revenue recognised by our company, money passing through the platform, contract value, gross profit, forecast or an annualised run rate? What is the time period, currency and source?

Directly observed: Payments received and recorded as your company's own revenue
Supported but limited: A pilot, trial, letter of intent or other commitment; A measured repeat, renewal or retention rate from your own records; A signed contract or a total contract value; Money passing through your platform (transaction value)
Contradicted: Only if you say you hold it: customers declined to pay our price, or did not pay what they agreed.

In the report: Section 3: A large money figure is not necessarily company revenue

Customers come back, renew or buy again

The question it answers: Do customers repeat the action? Are they coming back, renewing, expanding or buying again? If we are too early to measure that, what experiment would create the first observable repeat signal?

Directly observed: A measured repeat, renewal or retention rate from your own records
Supported but limited: Sign-ups, a waitlist, downloads or active users; A pilot, trial, letter of intent or other commitment; A signed contract or a total contract value; Payments received and recorded as your company's own revenue
Contradicted: Only if you say you hold it: customers did not come back, renew or buy again.

In the report: Section 4: Retention: the question after the first customer

We can reach the next buyers

The question it answers: Can we describe how to reach the next buyer? What is the customer's trigger, where can we access them, what message earns a response and what is the next commercial action? Can we test this with a modest number of reachable buyers?

Directly observed: A route to buyers you have tested, with a measured conversion rate or sales cycle
Supported but limited: Interviews in which buyers described the problem; Sign-ups, a waitlist, downloads or active users; A pilot, trial, letter of intent or other commitment; A measured repeat, renewal or retention rate from your own records; A signed contract or a total contract value; Money passing through your platform (transaction value); Payments received and recorded as your company's own revenue
Contradicted: Only if you say you hold it: the route we tried did not bring buyers.

In the report: Section 5: How will the next customers actually arrive?

The market is large enough for this business

The question it answers: Can these buyers be reached? What is the customer's trigger, where can we access them, what message earns a response and what is the next commercial action? Can we test this with a modest number of reachable buyers?

Directly observed: None. See the note on market claims below.
Supported but limited: Interviews in which buyers described the problem; Sign-ups, a waitlist, downloads or active users; A pilot, trial, letter of intent or other commitment; A route to buyers you have tested, with a measured conversion rate or sales cycle; A measured repeat, renewal or retention rate from your own records; A signed contract or a total contract value; Money passing through your platform (transaction value); Payments received and recorded as your company's own revenue
Contradicted: Only if you say you hold it: buyers in the first group we approached did not respond.

In the report: Section 6: A big market and a strong team are not yet a market response

No evidence a founder holds directly observes the size of a market. A size is an estimate; what can be observed is buyers in a group you can reach taking action. In the report's words: “The first figure describes a possible population; the second is a forecast about winning customers.”
From the report: Section 6: A big market and a strong team are not yet a market response

What each kind of evidence does not establish

What people told you

Interviews in which buyers described the problem: What people say about a problem is not yet an action. It does not show that they will commit, pay or come back. (based on Section 11: Six commercial questions a founder can use immediately)

What people did

Sign-ups, a waitlist, downloads or active users: It cannot automatically be assumed that engagement converts into payment or repeat demand. (the report's words, Section 1: Which decks these numbers describe)
A pilot, trial, letter of intent or other commitment: It cannot automatically be assumed that a commitment has become paid use. (the report's words, Section 1: Which decks these numbers describe)
A route to buyers you have tested, with a measured conversion rate or sales cycle: A route that worked once is not yet shown to work again, with new buyers, at a cost you can sustain. (based on Section 5: How will the next customers actually arrive?)
A measured repeat, renewal or retention rate from your own records: It matters which customers were counted, when they joined, what constitutes staying, how long they were observed and whether the measure concerns users, accounts, revenue or another unit. (the report's words, Section 4: Retention: the question after the first customer)

What the money shows

A signed contract or a total contract value: A signed contract is evidence of a commercial relationship, but total contract value is not automatically equivalent to cash collected or revenue earned in the period. (the report's words, Section 3: A large money figure is not necessarily company revenue)
Money passing through your platform (transaction value): Transaction volume, contract or pilot value, gross profit, annualised or projected amounts and unlabelled figures are not silently counted as revenue. (the report's words, Appendix A: Methodology)
Payments received and recorded as your company's own revenue: A startup that has demonstrated willingness to buy once may still have an unresolved question about durable demand. (the report's words, Section 4: Retention: the question after the first customer)

What your team expects or believes

A channel you plan to use, such as partnerships, ads, referrals or outbound sales: These are channels. They are not necessarily a tested mechanism for reaching a specific buyer at an acceptable cost. (the report's words, Section 5: How will the next customers actually arrive?)
A forecast, projection, annualised run rate or lifetime-value estimate: A forecast or an estimate describes what your team expects. It is not a record of what customers have done. (based on Section 3: A large money figure is not necessarily company revenue)
A market-size estimate or an industry report: It just cannot stand in for proof that customers will recognise the problem, choose the offer and pay. (the report's words, Section 6: A big market and a strong team are not yet a market response)
Your team's conviction, expertise or a product demonstration: A founder can produce a credible product demonstration long before discovering whether the buyer feels the problem strongly, has the authority to purchase or will exchange money for the solution. (the report's words, Section 10: What an investor can reasonably understand from a deck)

Something else

Interest or funding from investors: Investor interest cannot show whether customers recognise the problem, can be reached, act on the proposition, pay and return. (the report's words, Section 10: What an investor can reasonably understand from a deck)
Nothing yet: Being early is not the problem. Treating an untested proposition as settled is. (the report's words, Introduction: Start with the claim you lean on most)

Scope

What this self-check is not

Not a score, a grade or a ranking of your pitch, and not a judgement of you or your team.
Not a prediction of whether investors will fund you. It looks only at whether customers have shown what the claim says.
It does not read your deck or any document, and it does not research your company. It uses only the choices you make on this page.
Evidence you hold privately counts. The descriptions are about the evidence you choose here, not about what a public deck shows.

Nothing here shows that including a slide, quoting a metric or avoiding a phrase makes investors say yes, and a public deck is only one piece of a wider decision.
From the report: Section 10: What an investor can reasonably understand from a deck

The most useful question a pitch can lead you to is not “Does this sound investable?” It is this: What would it take to turn your strongest pitch claim into something customers have actually demonstrated?
From the report: Conclusion: From your strongest claim to what customers have demonstrated