Most startup pitches investors sit through are running on promise. “People will want it, the market’s massive, trust us…” and sometimes that’s all a young startup has. But every now and then, a deck lands on our desk that’s built on proof instead. Every claim has substantiated evidence behind it, and BAGYT’s was one of them.
This is the second deck from the 2026 Hult Prize cohort. Gōru author Peter Deans mentored and judged BAGYT, a team out of Kyrgyzstan that made the global top 80, out of more than 18,000 entries, with an affordable smart cane for the vision impaired.
And they didn’t get there on a slicker story than anyone else, they just provided proof. Take what you need from their pitch below and work it into your own!
Make sure your problem is specific
Plenty of pitches open on a giant number. BAGYT does too; 2.2 billion people are living with vision impairment, and on its own that number is easy to admire and then forget.
What they do next is worth studying. They funnel it down. Traditional canes miss anything above waist height, which is where people actually get hurt. Current smart canes can cost up to $2000, priced out of the markets that need them most. And in Kyrgyzstan, over nine thousand visually impaired people, almost none of them are served. In three steps they go from a statistic nobody can act on, to a specific, unfair gap you can visualize.
Steal this: a huge market number impresses no one on its own. Narrow it until it hurts. Take your reader from the global figure to the one person, in one place, with the exact problem you fix. Fundable problems are specific, not big.
Sell the benefit, not the engineering
BAGYT’s cane is genuinely clever. Ultrasonic sensors reading obstacles two metres out, a motor that buzzes a warning into the handle, an SOS button wired to a carer, a modular body a local shop can repair. Real engineering.
But look at how they describe it. Every feature is framed by what it does for the person, never by how impressive the component is. Not “haptic feedback module,” rather, you feel the danger in your hand before you reach it. The tech earns its place by putting the user at the centre of the solution.
Steal this: founders love explaining how their thing works because they’re proud of it. Customers only care what it does for them, so lead with the outcome. If a feature doesn’t obviously benefit the user, either explain why it matters or cut it.
Put evidence on the same slide as the claim
Here’s where the proof-over-promise thing really shows. On that same solution slide, right under the features, sit two numbers: 85 canes already sold, and 87% of surveyed users saying they intend to buy.
They didn’t make you wait for a later traction slide to find out whether any of this was real. The claim and the evidence arrive together, so there’s no gap for doubt to creep into. You read “here’s what it does” and “here’s who already paid for it” in the same breath.
Steal this: don’t quarantine all your proof on one traction slide near the end. Sprinkle it through the deck. Every time you make a claim you can back, back it right there. It completely changes how the room reads you as a founder reporting.
Show traction as a story, not a list
BAGYT’s is deck loaded with proof that they’re more than a pipe dream. A hackathon win, a university competition, a grant, National Hult Prize Champion for all of Kyrgyzstan, national press, 85 paying customers, 350 more on signed institutional order. Underneath, the partners vouching for them, including the Kyrgyz Ministry of Social Security and the Kyrgyz Society of the Blind and Deaf.
They laid it on a timeline, so instead of a pile of achievements you see a line climbing. Steady progression, not just credentials. And they hold two numbers side by side that answer two different questions: 85 sold proves people are paying, 350 on order proves it scales past the first few enthusiasts.
Steal this: traction isn’t only revenue. It’s every signal that someone other than you believes in this, sales, orders, grants, awards, a government body lending its name. Put it in the order it happened so the reader watches the thing build. And be deliberate about pairing an “it works” number with an “it scales” number. They do very different jobs.
Know your numbers to the dollar
BAGYT knows their unit economics cold. 118 dollars to build a cane, sold at 149, a 20% gross margin today, falling to 86 dollars a unit at scale. They know exactly who buys, direct from users through their site and field agents on installment plans, and through institutions like government programs, blind associations and rehab centres. Passion is table stakes. Knowing your margin is what separates your business’ viability.
Steal this: before you pitch anything, be able to say what one unit costs, what it sells for, and what’s left over. Be honest and direct here.
Show your team’s value
Early on, before the revenue is big enough to speak for itself, investors back people. A good team slide doesn’t list impressive people, it answers a single question: why is this the group that can actually pull this off? BAGYT’s answers it at a glance.
Steal this: map each founder to a specific piece of the job, not a job title and a nice photo. When every critical function, build it, sell it, run it, has a named owner who clearly knows their patch, the reader stops worrying about execution. Titles aren’t decoration. Each one should signal a real edge, a depth of knowledge your team has that most don’t.
Strip BAGYT’s pitch back and the pattern is simple: Every claim has proof next to it, every number has a source, every founder, a clear job. The deck doesn’t ask you to believe, it shows you and lets you conclude.
That’s the most useful thing any early founder can copy. You probably have more proof than you think, an early sale, a waitlist, a signed letter, a pilot, a survey. Most people bury it or save it for the end. Pull it forward, attach it to your claims, and let the evidence do the persuading. A deck that shows will beat a deck that promises almost every time.
Want your numbers as sharp as BAGYT’s before you pitch? The Startup Toolkit: A Step-by-Step Guide for Founders, written by our founder Peter Deans, takes you from raw idea to funding conversation. Or grab the Startup Bundle for the book plus the Business Plan, Pitch Deck and Cash Flow Forecast templates, so the maths behind your story actually holds up.
