Visible passion wins investors over more than pitch content

Entrepreneurs pitching to investors should pay more attention to their visual cues to increase their chances of success. Visual information, that is, body language, gestures, facial expressions and visible passion, are far more influential on investor decision-making than previously thought. In the paper, published in Academy of Management Discoveries , the researcher found that when both expert investors and novices were played silent videos of entrepreneurial pitches, they were able to correctly identify the original investors' selections of winning pitches. "It is apparent that such a dependence on visual information is most likely to emerge in high-stake, time-pressured settings such as entrepreneurial pitch competitions." The researcher carried out 12 studies with 1,855 participants, using footage and outcomes from live pitch competitions. In one of the key studies, 501 participants were played short recordings of either visual-only, sound-only or video-with-sound excerpts of the same segment of a pitch. Each participant viewed recordings of three finalists from nine competitions (27 excerpts in total) across a range of industries from mobile technology to life sciences. The original pitches were judged by separate panels of industry experts, angel investors, venture capitalists and experienced entrepreneurs who fund start-ups.