How to Make a Pitch Video for Investors (2026 Guide)
By the Maybe Lab teamA pitch video is a 60–90 second video that gets an investor to understand your startup — the problem, the product, the traction, and the ask — before they open your deck. It's what accelerators show on demo day and what you attach to a cold outreach email. Here's the structure investors expect and how to produce one without a film crew.
What a pitch video is for
Investors screen hundreds of decks a week and skim most of them. A tight video does the one thing a PDF can't: it makes the product feel real and the founder feel credible in under two minutes. It doesn't replace the deck or the meeting — it earns you the meeting.
The structure investors expect
| Beat | Duration | What to cover |
|---|---|---|
| Problem | 10–15 sec | The painful, specific problem — who has it and why it matters |
| Solution | 15–20 sec | Your product solving it, shown in action |
| Traction | 10–15 sec | Revenue, growth, users, or a marquee logo |
| Why now / why you | 10–15 sec | The unfair advantage or timing insight |
| The ask | 5–10 sec | How much you're raising and what it unlocks |
What to show, not just say
- The product working — a real screen or flow beats a description every time.
- Numbers on screen — traction is more convincing as a chart than a voiceover claim.
- The team, briefly — a face builds trust, but keep it to a beat, not a monologue.
- One memorable line — the sentence an investor repeats to their partners.
The beats above map closely to a launch video's — write them the same way, using the product video script template, and open with a hook like any launch video that converts.
Demo day videos are a stricter cut
Accelerators like Y Combinator often cap demo day videos at 60 seconds and play them muted on a big screen to a distracted room. That means captions are mandatory and the hook has to land in the first three seconds. Treat runtime as a hard constraint — see how long a product video should be — and cut everything that isn't problem, product, or traction.
How to make one without a crew
You don't need a videographer or a weekend. Describe your startup, the problem, and your traction to Maybe Lab and generate an on-brand, captioned pitch video sized for demo day and email. When the round closes, reuse the same project to make a funding announcement video.
Pitch video FAQ
How long should a pitch video be?
60–90 seconds for investor outreach, and 60 seconds or less for demo day. Long enough to cover problem, product, traction, and the ask; short enough that a busy investor finishes it.
What should a startup pitch video include?
The problem, your solution shown in action, traction (revenue, growth, or users), why-now/why-you, and a clear ask — with numbers on screen and captions for muted viewing.
Do I need to appear on camera in a pitch video?
No. A short founder moment builds trust, but many strong pitch videos are motion graphics that show the product and traction, with no talking-head footage at all.
How is a pitch video different from a launch video?
A launch video sells the product to customers; a pitch video sells the company to investors, so it leads with problem, market, and traction rather than features and a customer CTA.
The best pitch videos make an investor lean in before they read a single slide. Describe your startup, and Maybe Lab turns it into one in minutes — start from the funding template if you want the structure pre-set.
Make your next launch in motion
Maybe Lab turns prompts into product launch and update videos — story, assets, and final cut, start to end.
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