Pitch Components

Problem

State the customer's pain clearly enough that the audience feels the urgency.

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What & why

What it is
In a spoken pitch, the problem section describes the customer's pain and how people handle it today. A well-framed problem makes the audience feel urgency before you present the solution. It should be specific, relatable, and concrete, not a vague industry trend. Y Combinator consistently pushes founders to make the problem legible fast. The strongest spoken problem statements combine a clear fact with a human consequence so the pain is easy to feel and easy to remember.
Why it works

Naming the problem first works because tension tends to create demand for resolution. Once a listener feels a specific pain, they lean in for the fix, so your solution lands on prepared ground instead of arriving unrequested. A concrete fact paired with a human consequence is easy to picture and remember, which usually beats an abstract trend that slides past. Framing the cost of the status quo also reframes inaction as the risky choice, lowering resistance to whatever you propose next.

Before & after

Before

“Communication is broken in the modern workplace. Teams are struggling with too many tools.”

After

“Engineering teams lose 5 hours per week context-switching between Slack, Jira, and GitHub. That's $47,000 per engineer per year in lost productivity, and it's why critical bugs slip through.”

When you’ll use it

Framing the opportunity for investors who have never experienced the pain firsthand

Explaining to enterprise buyers why the status quo is costing them money

Setting up a demo by showing what life looks like without your product

Writing the opening paragraph of an accelerator application

Presenting market research findings that validate customer pain

Pro tip

Make the problem feel costly, frustrating, or risky. If the room shrugs, the pain is still too abstract.

Questions & answers

What if my product solves multiple problems?

Pick the one problem that is most painful, most urgent, and easiest for the audience to understand. You can mention secondary problems later, but the pitch should lead with the sharpest pain.

How do I frame a problem for a market that doesn't know it has one?

Use a before/after contrast. Show what the audience currently accepts as normal, then reveal the hidden cost or risk they haven't quantified. Data makes invisible problems visible.

Learn more

Y Combinator - How to Pitch Your Company
OpenVC - Problem Slide Best Practices and Examples

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