Visuals Dominate Investor Decisions about Entrepreneurial Pitches

Abstract

Entrepreneurs and investors often deem substantive content to be particularly important as they evaluate the potential value of business propositions. Yet across 12 studies and 1,855 participants using live entrepreneurial pitch competitions, silent videos—but not sound recordings, video-with-sound recordings, or pitch transcriptions—best allowed both experts and novices to identify the original investors' selections of winning entrepreneurial pitches. These results suggest that people’s judgment may be highly influenced by visual information. Further, people do not seem to fully recognize how much visual information factors into their decisions, such that they neglect the more substantive metrics that they explicitly cite and value as core to their decisions. The findings highlight the power of dynamic visual cues—including gestures, facial expressions, and body language—and demonstrate that visible passion can dominate the content of business propositions in entrepreneurial pitch competitions.