Skip to main content

Pitching to investors. How to make an impact


November 11 OF 2019 from 07:00 PM

On Monday, November 11th at 19.00, ESADE Alumni Entrepreneurship is holding a talk about how to sell your company, the importance of having a clear, well-structured pitch and the techniques necessary to make an impact, at ESADE Barcelona, Av. Pedralbes 60-62. The speaker will be Katherine d’Amico, associate professor on several programmes at ESADE.

All too often, entrepreneurs make the mistake of focusing too much on their selling points and not enough on how to get them across. Failure to convey information well can be detrimental to great projects. Entrepreneurs can improve the chances of success of their proposals enormously by weighing up who is the main investment decision-maker and tweaking their arguments accordingly.

There are five styles of decision-making that span a broad spectrum of traits and behaviour. Each decision is taken on the basis of a combination of logic and emotion, but the importance of each one when taking decisions may vary depending on the investor. Investors have a natural tendency to use a certain style of decision making that is reinforced by success, or which changes after repeated failures. In other words, a predetermined style of decision making.


This paper will address the five styles of decision making and how to make an impact on each one by using the best pitch techniques:

1. The art of starting. A reason to believe and common territory 
2. The 7 structures and clarity: economy of language 
3. Decisions based on facts alone: the limbic brain and the social test 
4. Talking about impact is not the same as making an impact: techniques and examples of real-life cases 
5. Para-language and body language 
6. Call to action 
7. Anticipate resistance: 24 attacks and 24 answers. Effective question and answer management 


Katharine D’Amico 

PhD candidate in sociolinguistics, MSc in linguistics, translation and interpreting (McGill University, Montreal, Canada) 
Associate professor at ESADE Business School on variety of programmes: 
ESADE Executive MBA programme 
Global Governance programme, ESADE Law School 
ESADE Executive Master in e-Business 
Personalised ESADE executive education programmes 
Corporate pitching for entrepreneurs 
Applied neurolinguistics for corporate presentations and leadership 
Speak like a TED speaker. Techniques of persuasion 
Mentor in public speaking and pitch deck management for more than 500 start-ups, helping to raise more than €75m in public funds and private investment 
CEO at Swala Ventures Family Office, business angel in new tech companies prior to creation and in early stages. Particularly interested in VR, AR, MR and IOT technologies and AI.