Secrets of a Successful Pitch: Recommendations from Aset Dosymkhanov and Nikolai Tyun

Asset Dossymkhanov, city — Almaty, founder of the venture studio RS Bootcamp, Linkedin

Nikolai Tyan, city — Karaganda, lead tracker of business programs at Terricon Valley, partner at Red Team Accelerator, LinkedIn

About Me

Asset. I am the founder of the venture studio RS Bootcamp, which has been successfully operating in the market for over two years and collaborates with leading banks. At the same time, I serve as co-founder of the investment club MOST Club, where we actively support startups and facilitate investment attraction. Working with startups is a key area of our activity, and we practically help teams build businesses and scale.

Nikolai. Since 2018, I have specialized in supporting entrepreneurs and startups, helping them grow faster than they could on their own. Within Astana Hub, together with partner Evgeny Frolov, I lead the CLP and Google for Startups programs, and I also develop my own company, Red Team Accelerator. Additionally, I am a lead tracker in the incubator and accelerator at the IT hub Terricon Valley. Over this time, I have worked with more than 300 projects and analyzed over 1,000 startups from Central Asia, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, and other countries. My experience covers companies at various stages — from ideas to operating businesses with revenues ranging from $1,500 to millions of dollars per year.

Recommendations

Asset. Do not start with the team story. The team is an important advantage, but for an investor, it is primarily important to understand the product, the problem, and the market. The team story should be placed on a separate slide after describing the product and its value.

Currently, there is too much functionality, but there is no clear need or clarity on what exactly customers are paying for. I recommend choosing one or two key features that truly solve the audience's problem and building the presentation around them.

Tell us how your solution differs from free alternatives.

You need to clearly define the customer's problem: what is wrong with current methods, template documents, free services, why they are inconvenient or ineffective.

Support this with data and examples from real customer experience.

Startups as a target audience are risky: short lifecycle, limited budgets. Think about more solvent segments where there is stable demand and resources.

At the beginning of the pitch, immediately answer the key question — why should people buy your product specifically. Without a clear explanation of value, the presentation looks weaker compared to cheaper and more understandable competitor solutions.

Focus on one main product. Remove confusion between different directions and show its uniqueness and potential.

Clearly define the monetization model. In a saturated market of fitness and nutrition apps, competition can only be won through unique functionality or solving unmet audience needs.

Elaborate on the value of AI tools. Show how they differ from competitor solutions and what real problem they solve better than existing products.

Clarify the target audience. If the main focus is women, it is important to show which specific pains the product solves. At the same time, it is worth studying other segments — men, millennials, Generation Z.

Find your niche. Simply copying competitor features leads to loss of startup identity. Either use new technologies and their practical application, or identify segments and problems that remain uncovered.

Give investors a clear picture. Clearly explain what exactly you are offering, for whom, why, and why it is better than alternatives. Show technological advantage or deep understanding of the specifics of the chosen segment.

Try to test hypotheses not on acquaintances, but on real users of competing products — they are the ones who have experience and understanding of what works poorly and where unresolved problems remain.

Focus on the pain that arises when using existing solutions — copying analogs of Google Docs or CRM is pointless; it is more valuable to understand what specifically dissatisfies clients and offer a new level of product.

Pay attention to routine and inconveniences — people do not want to spend time on manual processes, and it is precisely where you can simplify or automate that the best startups are born.

Avoid direct copying — this is a high-risk path that rarely attracts investor interest. It is more effective to find weak points in popular services and build a solution based on them.

Remember that raising capital has become easier, but the main thing is to show a real need and a convincing solution, because real customer pains are the best argument for growth and investment.

Nikolai. My recommendation is to focus on one or two key features and bring them to a level surpassing all market analogs. This will allow creating a flagship product around which growth can be built. It is important to maintain balance: new customer requests, of course, should be taken into account, but priority should be given to focused solutions.

The second piece of advice is clear audience segmentation. Startups and small businesses need simple and effective tools to reduce costs and optimize processes. Working specifically with this group will yield quick results.

And third — build a step-by-step scaling strategy: first strengthen positions with the flagship product, then gradually add new modules and form an ecosystem. This path was taken by successful companies like Kontur in Russia, and it has proven its effectiveness.

In the presentation, it is important to show the results of customer interviews. If more than a hundred meetings were conducted, investors expect to see key insights and how they influenced the product and business model. This strengthens trust and demonstrates that decisions are based not only on assumptions.

Do not scatter attention across multiple directions at once. When simultaneously developing a franchise, mobile application, ecosystem, and separate technologies, focus is lost. It is better to focus on one direction, bring it to a competitive level, and only then expand.

The business model must be transparent. If the cost of POD and the income distribution scheme are stated, it is necessary to explain on what calculations the payback period within a year is based and what risks the franchisee faces. Clear financial premises and investment return scenarios will make the offer more convincing.

At the start, the priority is demand validation. It is much more effective to first sell the product or concept, and only then invest in development. This approach saves resources and quickly shows whether there is a market.

Customer interviews are needed not to confirm ideas, but to identify weaknesses and objections. It is precisely criticism and rejection of hypotheses that help find strong solutions.

Maintain resilience and keep moving. A startup is always associated with difficulties, and it is precisely overcoming these challenges that forms competitive advantages and team strength.

Sell first, then build. Do not waste resources on product development until you have verified that it is ready to be purchased. This will save time and money.

Learn to listen. During interviews, it is important not to look for confirmation of your idea, but rather to try to find refutation. Strong ideas are born through identifying weaknesses and rejecting hypotheses.