Nobody buys bullet points.
Why Americans need a story — not an EU founder product feature list.
Here’s the quiet tragedy I see week after week:
A brilliant European founder lands a U.S. call.
They’re legit — smart, well-funded, product’s strong.
They walk through the pitch like a TED Talk:
What the product does
How it works
Why it’s different
All clear. All factual. All correct.
And yet… the buyer says,
“Cool, let us think about it.”
Then disappears forever.
Why?
Because facts inform.
But stories move people.
You can explain what your product does all day long.
But if you don’t make me feel why it matters,
I’m not buying.
Not because I didn’t understand it.
But because I didn’t see myself in it.
Americans aren’t just sold by outcomes.
We’re sold by emotion. By tension.
By a problem that sounds exactly like the one I vented about in the hallway this morning.
You know what actually lands?
When you say:
“One of our clients had a nightmare onboarding process.
They were burning dev hours just to get new customers live.
We helped cut that by 60% — and their head of ops literally messaged us:
‘This finally feels manageable again.’”
That moment? That message?
That’s what gets a deal moving.
Not because the product is better —
but because it hit something real.
Here’s the rule I teach every founder I work with:
Don’t tell me what it does.
Tell me WHO it helped.
And how their life changed after.
Your product’s just the middle of the story.
What I want to hear is the before and after.
Try this before your next pitch:
Write out one customer story that starts with a struggle.
What sucked before you showed up?
How did that pain show up in their day-to-day?
What shifted after they started using you?
Then use that story in your deck, your demo, or your opening email.
It won’t just clarify what you do —
it’ll finally make me care.
Founders who master this close more. Period.
Because you’re not just explaining.
You’re connecting.
And connection drives conversion.
Every time.