How can you adapt your pitch on the fly to a potential customer, to an investor, or to a generalist audience? Today you can listen in on a live consulting session where I help a founder crack this question.

In this episode, I'm consulting Oliver Siegel, the co-founder and CEO of the deep tech startup Magmatic Bio. Magmatic designs synthetic proteins that separate critical metals from each other.

Connect with the host:

⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmidt-marina/⁠⁠⁠

marina@r2g.media

Need help communicating your tech?

https://www.wearekinetik.com/

Check out Magmatic

https://magmatic.bio/

Connect with Oliver

https://www.linkedin.com/in/siegel-oliver/https://www.linkedin.com/in/siegel-oliver/

If your startup needs to speak to very different audiences — investors, corporates, consumers — this episode lays out why that skill matters more than most founders think.

How you explain your work changes depending on who’s in front of you, and that can decide whether people actually understand what you do. If you’re selling cookies, fine. If you’re building a complex solution to a complex problem, communication becomes core to the product.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Nina Mannheim, previously the co-founder and CPO of Klim. Klim started back in 2019 in Berlin, when “regenerative agriculture” was still a barely known term. The team had to figure out how to make a complicated topic land with groups who had completely different levels of context and completely different interests. Not easy — but they still managed to raise a 22M Series A in 2024.

What Klim learned applies far beyond agriculture.

00:00 – Why stakeholder communication matters
00:42 – Klim’s origin and early challenges
02:23 – Business model and stakeholder map
03:41 – Why consumers still mattered
06:26 – Building credibility as a tiny startup
09:07 – Which stakeholder group was hardest
12:20 – Early communication mistakes with farmers
23:45 – Tailoring communication for investors

Links

Connect with Steve Molino:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ninamannheimer/

Check out Klim

https://www.klim.eco/

Connect with the host:

⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmidt-marina/⁠⁠

marina@r2g.media

When you are working on a technical or scientific innovation, pitching a specialized VC firm may seem like the light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, someone who will get it. Or… will they?

Today’s guest, Steve Molino, is Principal at Synthesis Capital based in New Jersey. And today’s episode asks: How can founders with complex tech craft pitch decks that help them get there, past the initial interest? Ironically, having cutting-edge technology may make it harder, not easier.

Steve Molino works across food tech and biotech. Previously, he led investment activity at Clear Current Capital as Partner and Head of Investments. He focused on early-stage investments and now covers Series A, B, or later.

You are listening to Scaling Nerds, the podcast covering all things communications for science and tech founders.

Links

Connect with Steve Molino:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmolino/

Check out Synthesis

https://synthesis.capital/

Connect with me:

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmidt-marina/⁠

marina@r2g.media

Resources Mentioned:

Granola AI

Slidebean

Slidesgo

Canva