The pitch problem
Giant Leap VC Will Richardson is tired of AI-written pitch emails. In a piece for Startup Daily, he calls out the wave of generic, polished-to-death outreach landing in investor inboxes.
The one that caught his attention? Subject line: "Lame cold pitch from the US." Self-deprecating, honest, written by a human. It referenced specific portfolio companies, explained why he was reaching out to Giant Leap, and included real operating experience. No jargon, no polish, no ChatGPT.
Richardson's point: when the cost of sending an email drops to zero, so does the signal. Founders are mass-producing pitches with AI tools, assuming volume will compensate for quality. It does not. The emails do not convert.
Why this matters for sales
This is not just a VC problem. It is a sales problem.
SDRs and AEs are facing the same backlash. When everyone uses AI pitch generators (Gamma, Pitch, the free tools flooding Reddit), every pitch starts to sound the same. Prospects can spot it. Investors can spot it. The pattern-matching is instant: vague value props, jargon-heavy language, zero personalisation.
Richardson's advice applies to cold outreach across the board: if you cannot clearly articulate your value in an email, you will not convince customers, recruit a team, or close a deal. The email is the audition.
The ANZ angle
Giant Leap is an ANZ-focused fund. Richardson is based in Australia, investing in local startups. His inbox is a window into how ANZ founders are approaching outreach, and the pattern he is seeing is global: everyone is using the same tools, producing the same output.
The countermovement is starting. Some founders are now adding "written by a human" disclaimers. Others are deliberately including typos to signal authenticity. There is even an AI tool that will add mistakes for you, which is a whole other level of absurd.
Bottom line: if your cold email could have been written by anyone, it will be read by no one. Specificity, human judgment, and real research still matter. AI can help with ideation, but copy-pasting ChatGPT output is not a growth strategy.
Worth noting: This applies to sales pitch decks too. The AI pitch deck generators (Gamma, Pitch AI, the free tools) are producing similar-looking decks. If your deck looks like everyone else's, you are not differentiating.
The skill that matters: editing AI output until it sounds like you, not like the tool.