A great pitch comes down to one thing: being trusted

Stop Pitching to Spreadsheets. Start Pitching to People.

When it comes to a company pitch, many founders lead with features and data, inadvertently triggering the "sceptical" brain instead of the "trusting" one. Join Callum and David from Hardwired for an intensive workshop to align your pitching strategy with the biological reality that 100% of investors are human beings.

10 am - 12 pm: The Trust Blueprint (Open Session | 2 Hours)

We will cover -

• How we instinctively decide to trust one another and what our brains are doing in those first critical moments.
• Deep-dive into trust psychology and how the human brain deduces credibility.
• A breakdown of pitches and provide examples of how it must map onto trust psychology.
• You’ll walk away with a clear, actionable "recipe" to align your pitch with how humans are actually wired to say "yes."

12 - 12:30 pm - Lunch

12:30 - 2:30 pm: The Pitch Lab (Optional Workshop | Max 30 People | 2 Hours)

For those ready to do the "grunt work," this session turns theory into a finished first draft.

• We split into small groups of up to six to collaborate and re-engineer your pitch using the Hardwired recipe.
• Callum and David move between groups, providing direct feedback and coaching.
• Outcome??? You leave with a completed first draft of a trust-aligned pitch and the sensory cues needed to refine it in real-time.

Why attend?

For Startups: Get the edge in your next seed round by winning over investors before you even hit slide three.

For Scaleups: Improve your enterprise sales conversion by building a deeper rapport with C-suite stakeholders.

Unfunded founder? Please contact the event organiser, as your ticket is subsidised.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Victoria University of Wellington