If you want to get investors excited about your startup, you need to prove you have founder-market fit: that your skills, your experience and your passion line up perfectly with the market you’re serving. Here’s how you do it.

🌠 Show your industry knowledge and past successes. Did you work at the best firms in your industry? Have you already run your own successful ventures? Tell investors all about it. They have to believe that you know the ups and downs of the market and that you can drive your company through it.

🎨 Passion is another crucial element. A story about how you or a loved one faced the problem your startup is trying to solve is worth a thousand impresario-certified resumés, even if you’re not a solid expert when it comes to industry experience. Investors love founders with skin in the game. If you don’t have an ironclad market fit, then build up your knowledge via research to prove that you’re serious.

🥷🏻 Your founder’s story can make or break your pitch. Discuss exactly what led you to create the business. Was there a huge inefficiency or a glaring problem that you couldn’t look away from? Share that. Talk about what kept you up at night so your motive and your passion come through loud and clear.

There are two types of founder-market fit: direct and indirect. If you’ve built a successful business in the same domain – that’s a direct fit, and investors can get behind that. The other type is indirect, where you’re coming from a completely different domain, but you’ve identified an important problem that you’ve experienced personally. Tobi Lütke [co-founder and CEO of Shopify] didn’t come from e-commerce. He wanted to open a snowboard shop and found that the tools available were not good enough. So, he transformed that pain point into Shopify. Both are equally valid and compelling. Of all founders of successful startups, around 54 per cent have indirect founder-market fit, versus 45 per cent that have direct fit.

When pitching, lead with your founder’s story. Describe the problem your solution will solve and why you believe you’re the most qualified to do so. Focus on past outcomes such as previous successful ventures, industry awards, key partnerships or other achievements that demonstrate your expertise and ability to address the needs of the market.

To nail founder-market fit, mix your expertise with passion. Passion is more easily demonstrated, but you need to have concrete proof of domain expertise. If you don’t, bring in a co‑founder or key team member who does. This is particularly important for startups that are entering industries with complicated or regulatory-heavy distribution channels, such as healthcare. The story of Theranos is partly a case study of failing to do so.

If you don’t have the necessary expertise, find a co-founder who does. Their ability to occupy the knowledge space and their credibility can then help to overcome the information asymmetries and alleviate fears among investors. Understanding the industry or technology upon which the company is founded is especially important when that industry or technology is tightly regulated, or is otherwise technically complex.