By Nick Lahoika
The first question investors asked me in my early months of pitching was, “Where are you from?”
The accent gave me away every time.
Following the failed 2020 revolution in Belarus, I moved my company, Vocal Image, to Estonia. I arrived in Estonia with no English, no network and no understanding of the Western startup world. I spent months studying the language, practicing daily to improve my pronunciation and confidence.
Even with my very basic English, I started pitching immediately. I met an angel who decided to invest after just one pitch. Only half a year after our relocation, we closed our first round of $250,000.
In today’s market, where early-stage capital is shrinking, your ability to communicate is as critical as your product. Forty-four percent of U.S. unicorn founders are immigrants, and many of them started as outsiders. You may not “look the part,” but that doesn’t have to stop you from raising money. It certainly didn’t stop me.
From that experience, here are three lessons that I believe are highly valuable for any founder aiming to stand out.
Position yourself as a problem solver, not a capital-raiser
Investors meet hundreds of founders each year. Most of them open with how much they’re raising, not why they exist. When I started framing myself as someone obsessed with solving a real communication problem, not someone asking for capital, everything changed.
People invest in clarity and conviction. Instead of limiting myself to talking about market size or monetization, I illustrated the problem: how speech anxiety, accents and vocal tension limit people’s confidence globally. When your story is rooted in a genuine mission, your accent, location or background stops being a liability and becomes part of the proof.
Use body language to communicate confidence
How you carry yourself speaks louder than your words. Investors read it instantly. For example, if you lean back when challenged, it looks defensive. That’s why when I answer questions, I lean slightly forward, smile and nod. It signals that I’m engaged and listening instead of trying to protect myself.
Confidence also shows up in stillness. When you know your material, you don’t need to over-gesture. Remember that the goal is not to perform, but to connect. Smile first, listen fully and never interrupt. These small actions create a sense of trust long before you start talking about numbers.
The studies we relied on in product development show that voices with a lower pitch are perceived as 40% more confident and authoritative. Founders don’t need to fake that, but they can train it, the same way they can train their pitch deck.
Use pitch competitions as leverage
As I worked on my communication skills, pitch competitions became my springboard. They didn’t guarantee investment, but they built momentum. And in three first years, we won six: TechChill, Latitude 59, StartupFair, AWS AI Challenge, the European AI Startup Program by Meta, Hugging Face and ScaleWay. Those events brought us $700,000 and connections that led directly to our seed round.
Beyond the funding, there’s enormous value in visibility. By participating in these competitions, you get feedback, credibility and stage time. All of that accelerates learning and helps you make your story resonate across languages, markets and personalities.
When you don’t sound like an insider, raising capital is about clarity, control and presence. Investors may notice your accent in the first five seconds, but if you master those next five minutes, they’ll remember your idea, not where you came from.
Founders are obsessed with anxiously trying to get in front of investors, but anxiety kills a sale. You’ve already heard the advice from a startup mentor: practice your pitch, find your own mentors, and get feedback on your ideas.
In my experience, ideas and passion are key, but it’s your polished soft skills that actually let you show that passion to anybody.
Nick Lahoika is the co-founder and CEO of Vocal Image, a soft skills AI coaching startup. The company has more than 4 million downloads and 50,000 subscribers worldwide. His journey is deeply personal; he was bullied for unclear diction at school, which inspired his mission to help people communicate better. After being forced to flee his home country following the 2020 revolution, Lahoika arrived in Estonia with minimal command of English and used his own app to train his voice, securing his first round of funding within just six months. The winner of the AWS AI Challenge and Meta x Hugging Face European AI Startup Program, Vocal Image recently raised a $3.6 million seed round led by Educapital (France) and scaled to more than $14 million ARR.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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