Brian Nichols is the co-founder of Angel Squad, a community where you’ll learn how to angel invest and get a chance to invest as little as $1k into Hustle Fund's top performing early-stage startups

Here's what kills most technical founder pitches: spending 20 minutes explaining how the technology works and 30 seconds explaining why it matters.

Angel investors aren't PhDs evaluating your thesis. They're trying to figure out if your company will make money. The technology is just one piece of that puzzle.

What Investors Actually Care About

When Hustle Fund GP, Elizabeth Yin looks at technical founders, she's asking two questions. First, is this an awesome team as demonstrated by what they've done to date and how they answer questions and think about things? Second, is this an interesting opportunity with a meaningful, specific problem and a unique solution?

Both need to come together. It's not enough to be an awesome team building interesting technology. The opportunity needs to be there.

Most technical founders nail the first part. They can explain the technology in excruciating detail. Where they stumble is connecting that technology to a real business opportunity that investors can understand.

The Industry Operator Advantage

Hustle Fund is increasingly betting on industry operators over pure technologists.

There are digitally native people who spent 10 or 15 years in oil and energy or pharmaceuticals or other industries. They look at software being built and think "whoever built this has never operated a day in the life of an oil well." They see the gaps that pure tech founders miss.

With AI, these industry operators don't need to be technologists themselves. They can solve for the technology. What they can't solve for is the industry knowledge. That's the rare commodity.

If you're a technical founder without deep industry experience, find a co-founder who has it. Or at the very least, show investors you've spent serious time with customers understanding their world.

Translating Technical Risk to Business Risk

Hustle Fund tends to focus on market risk over technical risk. Most of their bets are on companies where the technology can be built, but the question is whether customers will actually pay for it.

When they do take technical risk, it's calculated. They invested in a company called Red Leader that was building high-resolution lidar technology. There was a lot of technical risk. The founders hadn't built the product yet. They had simulations suggesting it could work, but that was it.

Elizabeth's bet was on the technical chops of the team. Both founders were electrical engineering students, and back-channeling with their advisor confirmed they were the best of the best. Not just anybody. The best.

She also had to believe the market would want what they were building once they built it. High-resolution lidar was the dimension they wanted to win on. If they could execute technically, automotive companies and others would want it.

The terms of the deal mattered too. What are you investing at? What's the valuation? Early-stage investments with massive technical risk should reflect that risk in the terms.

How to Structure Your Technical Pitch

Start with the problem, not the solution. Don't lead with "We've built a novel machine learning algorithm that uses reinforcement learning to optimize resource allocation."

Lead with "Manufacturing plants waste 30 percent of their materials because they can't predict equipment failures. That's costing the industry $80 billion a year."

Now investors understand the opportunity. Now they care about how you solve it.

When you get to the technology, keep it simple. You can say "We use machine learning to predict equipment failures before they happen" without explaining gradient descent or neural network architectures.

If investors want to dig deeper into the technical details, they'll ask. Let them pull that information out of you rather than dumping it on them upfront.

Showing Why You're the Right Team

Relevant skills and background matter more than pedigree. Going to a fancy school or working at a brand-name tech company won't cut it.

Let's say your business helps musicians build a bigger audience. Include a few sentences about your experience as a musician. This shows investors you deeply understand your customers' pain points and have connections within the music industry for customer acquisition.

Work on problems where your team has a competitive edge. Show investors why your unique background is ideal for this business.

If you're building something in a technical domain, investors need to believe you can actually build it. Eric invested in Red Leader at a very early stage because the founders had the technical specialties that fit what they were doing. If they'd been super smart in other ways, that wouldn't have been sufficient for that particular bet.

The First Meeting Without a Deck

Hustle Fund conducts all first pitch meetings over Zoom without a pitch deck.

This might sound weird. You spent weeks crafting your pitch deck. But when you use a slide deck, you automatically enter presenter mode, which creates a clear power dynamic where one person is the decision maker and it's not you.

When you have a relaxed conversation, the power dynamic feels more balanced. You can connect more deeply as humans.

After initial small talk, ask the investor to tell you about themselves. How they got into venture. What their role at their firm is. A deal the fund recently completed.

After they share their story, tailor your pitch to their context. If they mentioned believing in startups that think long-term, emphasize how you're thinking long-term. If they started a women-focused fund, emphasize the diversity on your team. If they invested in a similar company, weave how that company inspired your journey if it's true.

Great storytelling is great listening. Notice their reactions. If they're looking away or fading off, change the subject. If they're nodding and smiling, lean more into your story.

Questions You'll Actually Get Asked

Elizabeth has a standard list of questions she asks technical founders.

About the team: Tell me about your background and your co-founders' backgrounds. How do you know each other? How long have you worked together and in what capacity?

About the problem: What problem are you solving? How do you know it's a real problem? Who are your target customers?

About the solution: What have you built so far? What's your unique insight or approach? Why can't this be easily replicated?

About traction: Who are your current customers? What does your growth look like? What are your key metrics?

About the market: How big is this market? Who are your competitors? What's your go-to-market strategy?

Notice that "explain your algorithm in detail" isn't on that list. The technology questions are always framed around what you've built and why it's differentiated, not how it works at a technical level.

When Technical Details Actually Matter

Sometimes the technical details are the whole story. If you're building something in synthetic biology or deep tech where the technology itself is the breakthrough, you'll need to go deeper.

But even then, frame it as "here's the breakthrough, here's why it matters, here's why we're the team to execute it." Don't get lost in the technical weeds before establishing why anyone should care.

Hustle Fund doesn't invest in synthetic biology not because it's not interesting, but because they don't have the skillset to evaluate it. Other deep tech investors focus on very specific areas because they did a PhD in that specific thing.

Know your audience. If you're pitching to deep tech investors with relevant expertise, you can get more technical. If you're pitching to generalist early-stage investors, stay high level until they ask for more.

The Follow-Up That Closes Deals

After the meeting, follow up immediately. Reiterate what you talked about and send over any promised materials.

But here's what most technical founders miss: send something that reinforces the business opportunity, not just more technical documentation. A one-pager on market size, a customer testimonial, early traction metrics. Something that keeps the investor excited about the opportunity, not just impressed by the technology.

Create an investor CRM to track interactions and manage follow-ups. Send monthly investor newsletters showing progress. Stay persistent without being annoying.

What Actually Converts Technical Investors

Ultimately, what closes technical investors is the same thing that closes all investors: momentum.

Show that customers want what you're building. Show that you're making progress on the hard technical problems. Show that the team is executing.

The technology is important, but it's just table stakes. What matters is that you're building a real business that will generate real returns.

For technical founders looking to connect with investors who understand deep tech opportunities while also evaluating business fundamentals, Angel Squad provides access to a community of investors who've backed technical founders through the hardest parts of building companies. The network understands both the technology and the business.