The Invisible Founder: Why Your Start up is Failing (And How to Fix It)
- Vishwanath Akuthota
- 4 hours ago
- 7 min read
Insights from Vishwanath Akuthota
Deep Tech (AI & Cybersecurity) | Founder, Dr. Pinnacle
Why Your Start up is Failing and How to fix it
There is a specific kind of heartbreak that happens in the startup world. It isn’t the heartbreak of a product failing or a server crashing. It is the heartbreak of the "No."
You have built something incredible. You have the vision, the technical skills, and the market research. You walk into a meeting with a Venture Capitalist (VC), you open your slide deck, and you pitch your heart out. You show them the graphs. You show them the projections.
And then… silence. A polite rejection. "We’ll pass."
Most founders walk away from these meetings thinking, “My numbers weren't good enough,” or “They didn't understand the product.”
But after sitting on the investor side of the table and watching hundreds of these meetings, I can tell you that is rarely the truth. The truth is much simpler and much more painful: You are bad at storytelling.
You are burying the lead. You are hiding the very things that make you investable.
To understand why this happens, we have to stop looking at fundraising like a math test and start looking at it like a radar screen.
The Radar Screen Analogy
Imagine an early-stage investor is an Air Traffic Controller. They are sitting in front of a radar screen, scanning for something very specific.
Every day, thousands of "blips" appear on that screen. These blips are founders. Most of them look exactly the same. They are small, generic, and indistinguishable from one another. They all say things like, "We are the Uber for Dog Walking" or "We have an AI-driven solution."
Because there is so much noise, the investor is looking for a Signal. They are looking for a blip that moves faster, shines brighter, or moves in a unique direction. When you walk into a pitch meeting and present a generic slide deck filled with standard business jargon, you are acting like static. You are invisible.
Founders think investors invest in business plans. In the early stages (Pre-Seed and Seed), this is false. Investors invest in people. They invest in the jockey, not the horse.
They are looking at you and asking one question: “Is this person a winner?” The problem is, most founders actively hide the evidence that proves they are winners. Here are the four biggest ways you are jamming your own signal, and how to fix them.
1. You Are Editing Out the Scars
When most people write a resume or a pitch, they try to look perfect. They present a linear path: I went to this school, then I got this job, then I started this company.
It’s clean. It’s professional. And it is incredibly boring.
The Analogy: Imagine you are hiring a captain to sail a ship through a hurricane. Two candidates walk in.
Candidate A says, “I have sailed in sunny weather for 10 years and never had an accident.”
Candidate B says, “I sailed through three typhoons. I lost a mast, ran out of food, and had to navigate by the stars for a week, but I got the ship home safely.”
Who are you hiring? You hire Candidate B. You hire the person with scars.
Investors know that building a startup is going to be hell. It is going to be a hurricane. If you present yourself as someone who has never struggled, the investor thinks, “The first time this person gets punched in the face by the market, they are going to quit.”
I see founders skip the hard parts of their lives constantly. They don't mention the time they failed, the time they were broke, or the time they had to pivot. They think it shows weakness. In reality, it shows resilience.
The Signal: Don’t hide the struggle. Show me you can take a punch and keep moving.
2. You Hide Your "Off the Curve" Moments
Society trains us to stay on the curve. Get good grades, follow the rules, fit in. But startups are, by definition, about breaking rules.
Investors are looking for "outliers"—people who don't behave like everyone else. Yet, when pitching, founders try to sound corporate and "normal."
The Analogy: Think of a professional gambler looking for a protégé. They don't want the person who plays by the book every single time. They want the person who, at age 12, figured out a way to count cards, or the person who started a grey-market candy business in their high school locker.
I often dig into a founder's past and find incredible stories. Maybe they were a professional chess player. Maybe they backpacked across a continent with no money. Maybe they hacked a system to get their first job.
These are "Off the Curve" moments. They prove you have agency. They prove you can hack the system.
When you leave these stories out of your pitch, you look like an employee, not a founder. An employee waits for instructions. A founder figures it out.
The Signal: Tell me about the time you didn't follow the rules and won anyway.
3. You Aren’t Showing You Are Part of "The Club"
This one is controversial, but it is real. Venture Capital is a human industry, and like all human industries, it is a tribe.
There is a specific "language" to high-growth startups. It’s not just about jargon; it’s about how you view the world. It’s about ambition, speed, and a specific type of worldview.
When you use generic language, you signal that you are an outsider. You signal that you don't understand the game you are trying to play.
The Analogy: Imagine walking into a locker room of professional athletes. You want to join the team. If you walk in wearing a suit and holding a briefcase, asking about the "company policy on exercise," they will laugh you out of the room. You need to walk in ready to play, speaking the shorthand of the game.
Founders often try to sound overly formal. They say things like, "We intend to leverage synergies to maximize output."
A true insider says, "We figured out a hack to lower CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) by 50% and we’re doubling down on it next week."
This isn't about being elitist; it's about signaling competence. It shows you have done your homework and you belong in the room.
The Signal: Demonstrate that you speak the language of speed and scale.
4. Your Founder-Market Fit is Hidden
Why are you the specific human being on planet Earth to build this specific company?
If the answer is just "I saw a gap in the market," that is not enough. Big companies see gaps in the market too, and they have more money than you.
Investors are looking for Founder-Market Fit. They want to see that your life history has inevitably led you to this moment.
The Analogy: If you are pitching a new medical device, and you just happen to be an MBA student who thinks it’s a "good opportunity," I am skeptical. But if you tell me, "I was a surgeon for 10 years, and I watched three patients die because this device didn't exist, so I quit my job to build it," ... take my money.
That is an obsession. That is a mission.
Generic pitch language usually hides this. Founders talk about the "TAM" (Total Addressable Market) and the "Revenue Projections," but they forget to mention that they have been obsessed with this problem for a decade.
The Signal: Show me that this isn't just a business for you; it’s a compulsion.
The Psychology of the "Yes"
When an investor writes a check, they are taking a massive risk. They are betting millions of dollars on a hallucination—a company that doesn't really exist yet.
To make that bet, they need to believe something specific about you. They need to think:
“This person is not random. They look like the type who will grow the company and will 100% close the round.”
That is the goal of storytelling. It isn't to entertain. It is to de-risk you.
When you tell the story of your resilience, your outlier moments, and your obsession, you are removing the risk. You are turning down the noise and turning up the signal. You are showing them that even if the product changes, or the market shifts, you will figure it out.
How to Dig Out Your Signal
Over the last year, I have watched brilliant founders bury their best signals. I have seen them lose funding not because their business was bad, but because their story was weak. Conversely, I have seen founders with average ideas raise massive rounds because they knew how to signal that they were winners.
This is a solvable problem. You don't need to invent a new life; you just need to excavate the one you have.
I have decided to open up a few spots for a new 1-on-1 format I’m calling “Signal and Story” sessions.
This isn't a generic business coaching call. We aren't going to check your grammar. We are going to dig.
Here is what we will do:
The Pitch: You pitch me just like you would an investor.
The Excavation: I will tear that pitch apart to find your real signals. We will find the hard parts, the outlier moments, and the obsession that you are currently hiding.
The Asset: I will write a sharp, narrative-driven One Pager for you.
This One Pager is not just a document. It is the foundation of your founder brand. You can use it to:
Send to Angels and VCs to get the meeting.
Send to warm connections to give them context.
Rewrite your pitch deck and website copy.
The Bonus Signal If we nail your story—and if you are comfortable with it—I might share it on my own channels. This puts your signal directly in front of a network of other founders and investors, amplifying your reach instantly.
Stop Being Invisible
The market is noisy. There are thousands of founders waving their hands, asking for attention.
Don’t be part of the noise. Be the signal.
If you are ready to stop hiding and start raising, let’s talk.
Make sure you own your AI. AI in the cloud isn’t aligned with you—it’s aligned with the company that owns it.
About the Author
Vishwanath Akuthota is a computer scientist, AI strategist, and founder of Dr. Pinnacle, where he helps enterprises build private, secure AI ecosystems that align with their missions. With 16+ years in AI research, cybersecurity, and product innovation, Vishwanath has guided Fortune 500 companies and governments in rethinking their AI roadmaps — from foundational models to real-time cybersecurity for deeptech and freedom tech.
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