Frankfurt. Handelsblatt. September 13, 2025. Forget “keep it simple”: according to a recent study (in Germany), start-up founders raise more funds when they express themselves in a more differentiated way. What makes a good pitch.
When start-up founders want to convince investors of their idea, they often receive the same advice: keep it simple. Messages should be as clear as possible, with few foreign words and no frills. However, a new study by researchers at the Technische Universtät Dortmund, the Universtät Passau, and the Technische Universtät Munich, published in the journal Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, shows that it’s not quite that simple.
According to the study, the use of cognitively complex language leads to greater financing success: those who expressed themselves in a more linguistically sophisticated manner during their pitch received an average of more than seven percent or approximately $125,000 in additional investment in the twelve months that followed.