The discount, the reframe and the humility that’s quietly killing your raise. Founders think the risk in a pitch is being caught overselling. There’s a second risk that costs SA founders more often: Underselling so hard that a fundable business sounds like a hobby.

The real is building a story with genuine momentum and framing what’s true in a way that shows direction and progress, without inventing traction that isn’t there.

Keet van Zyl is co-founder of Knife Capital, one of SA’s most active venture firms, with exits to Visa, Uber Eats and Ticketmaster. He’s sat across the table from thousands of pitches — and he’s candid about exactly what he’s discounting while you talk.

Momentum is what VCs actually look for: the sense that the business is moving, that each month is further than the last. You build it by framing real progress as a trajectory, not by stacking up traction numbers that invite an argument.

“There’s a way to oversell and not lie. South African entrepreneurs are too humble.”

Every experienced VC mentally slashes your projections the moment you say them. If you claim R10 million in revenue next year, they’re already writing down R7 million.

“Because you’re an engineer, we slash 30% off your projections from the bat. We want them targeting R10 million and getting R7 million.”

This is why underselling is fatal. If you’ve already lowered your own numbers to seem credible, the VC discounts the lowered figure again — and now a real business looks small. Aim high, defensibly, and let them apply the discount.

The most common way founders accidentally undersell is binary language. “The product isn’t finished.” “We’re still pre-revenue.” Both sound like a stop sign.

Keet’s reframe: give the thing a process with phases, and locate yourself inside it. Not “the product isn’t complete” but “our development process has six phases (scoping, R&D, and so on) and we’re at phase four of six.” Same reality. One version sounds stalled, the other sounds in motion.

“I’m speaking to a few clients” is the kind of throwaway line that builds zero momentum. It’s vague, unmemorable, and impossible to believe in.

“Have a four-phase business development process. We have 10 clients in phase one, 5 in the final phase.”

Same conversations, structured into a visible pipeline. Now the VC can see movement (prospects progressing through stages) instead of a founder who’s “chatting to some people.” Structure is what turns activity into momentum.

When you build momentum on raw traction figures (this many calls, this much revenue, this many users), you invite a number fight you can’t win. The VC will simply disagree and discount.

Keet would rather debate the why than the headline number. Build your story on the reasoning behind the trajectory (why the market moves the way you’re describing, why your progress compounds) because a sound why is far harder to argue down than a projection. Momentum built on logic survives the discount. Momentum built on numbers doesn’t.

Get this right, and you walk the line most SA founders fall off. You sound ambitious without triggering disbelief, and substantial without inflating. The VC sees a business in motion, run by someone who knows how to tell the truth in a compelling way.

It costs nothing to reframe how you tell the story. It can be the difference between a discounted no and a funded yes.

This is one piece of The SA VC Funding Landscape. Keet’s full masterclass inside the Founder Collab is the most candid look at how SA venture capital actually works:

You’ll also get access to 40+ other masterclasses from SA founders and operators on sales, UX, paid media, automations and more inside The Founder Collab.

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