You’ve prepared the pitch. You’ve rehearsed the line. You’ve polished the deck, and you’ve walked into the room and led with all of it. And somehow it still didn’t land.
This week on the From a Woman to a Leader podcast, I sat down with Naama Nicotra, the founder and CEO of NakedPak, for round two of our conversation. Naama is the first founder in the world to make microplastic-free meals wrapped in edible, hot-water-soluble packaging, and since we last spoke, NakedPak has received FDA compliance confirmation for US market entry, completed its R&D team, and is opening pre-orders for a fall launch.
But that wasn’t what we talked about. We talked about something most pitching and networking advice misses entirely: the part that happens before you open your mouth.
Below are the insights from our conversation, with my own experience and concrete steps you can take this week.
1. Women in Tech Are Missing a Bond Men Don’t Even Notice They Have
Naama opened our conversation with a moment she had just witnessed at an event. A male investor in his fifties was sitting with a young male founder around her age. They were hugging, joking, touching each other in a way that read as easy and instantly close. And it stopped her.
“They had this bond that maybe only men can have with each other.”
She traced it back to her time in the Israeli pilot course, where she was one of three women among ninety-seven men. One of the men told her later that the atmosphere physically changed the moment women walked into the room. They could not be as free, as crude, as themselves.
What struck her now, as a founder, is that the bond she watched between those two men in business is one she rarely gets to have with other women in her field — because there are not enough of them.
“This is probably our unfair advantage — that we can communicate in a way other people cannot. I just want to see it more.”
I think about this a lot in my coaching work. The women I work with often describe a quiet loneliness in the rooms they lead. Not because they lack peers in the company, but because they don’t have the equivalent of that easy, no-explanation-needed bond with another woman who gets it. We assume the work of building that bond is somehow a lower priority than the next deliverable. It isn’t.
How to apply this: This week, name one woman in your industry whose work you’ve quietly admired and have never reached out to. Send her a message. Ask one question. Not for a favor. Not for a coffee chat with an ask. Just to start the bond Naama is talking about. The room will not build it for you.
2. The People Who Walk Into Rooms of Strangers Are Just Looking for One Person
Naama is constantly walking into rooms where she knows no one. So am I, every conference, every networking event, every cold outreach call. And what surprised me most this week is how she actually does it.
She doesn’t work the room. She has a drink, she said, because it helps her relax. She finds one person. And she asks one question.
The way she met her husband is the cleanest example of this I’ve ever heard. She was at a party where she knew no one, sitting on the side with a beer, when she saw a man across the room who reminded her of someone she’d served with in the military. She walked over and asked:
“Are you Amir’s brother?”
He said yes. They started talking. They got married.
She also told me about the time she pitched the CEO of Bank Hapoalim by accident, ten minutes before he took the stage at an event for founders. She had no idea who he was. She just walked over, introduced herself, and showed him the product.
“If I knew that was the CEO of the bank, I would never have approached. But I came fresh.”
For most of my career, I thought walking into rooms where you don’t know anyone was something you got better at by being braver. What Naama named for me is that it’s actually a method. One drink to settle. One person to talk to. One question to start. That’s it.
How to apply this: Stop trying to work the next room. Walk in looking for one person. Maybe they remind you of someone. Maybe they look like they’d rather have one good conversation too. Approach them and ask the one thing you actually want to know. Skip the introduction-pitch loop. Lead with curiosity instead.
3. There Are Three Things People in Every Room Are Silently Asking, and You Need to Know Which One
This was the centerpiece of our conversation and the part I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. Naama keeps three versions of her pitch ready at all times, because she’s figured out that the person across from her is always silently asking one of three questions.
“I never use the same thing because the people are not the same.”
Some people want to know about you. Your story, how you came up with it, why this is what you do, and whether they can trust you to figure it out. Some people want to know about the numbers. The business model, the margins, how this generates money, and what the exit looks like. And some people want to know about the why. The mission. The plastic. The change you’re trying to make.
The work isn’t building three versions of yourself. The work is knowing which one to lead with.
“I learned way more from one minute of them speaking about themselves than from the deep research.”
So she doesn’t open with her pitch. She opens by asking the other person to talk first. One minute, sometimes five. By the time they’re done, she knows which version of the pitch is the right one — and she only delivers that one.
Naama walks through the three pitch personas and the “ask them first” move
This translates well past founders pitching investors. It’s how to run a discovery call. It’s how to walk into a performance review. It’s how to make your case for a promotion. The deck is not the problem. The deck is just one format, and most rooms don’t want the format. They want the answer to their question.
How to apply this: Before your next “make your case” conversation — a pitch, an interview, a board update, anything — write down the three versions of your story (the YOU version, the NUMBERS version, the WHY version). Walk in, ask the other person what they’re trying to figure out, listen for which of the three they’re actually asking about, then lead with that one.
4. Investors Don’t Want to Be Lectured. They Want to Ask the Questions.
Naama told me something most founders would consider heresy: she’s stopped using her slide deck in investor meetings.
“I completely neglected the deck. I share it before or after the meeting. But during the 30 minutes, it’s a conversation.”
She gives a three-minute summary at the top — the business, the opportunity, how much she’s raising — and then she stops talking. She lets the investor ask. And what she’s learned is that they ask wildly different questions. Some care about team and execution. Some ask about supply chain and margins. Some only want to talk about the patent or the roadmap.
“It’s very naive to think that if I create a deck of twelve slides, everyone would find their answers.”
“Investors don’t want to be lectured.”
Since she made this shift, her meetings got shorter, and her conversion got better. Fewer twenty-minute monologues. More fifteen-minute conversations that end in a yes or a follow-up.
I think about this every time I watch a colleague over-explain in a meeting. We treat “say more” as the safe move when the room goes quiet, when really the safer move is to ask, “What would be most useful for me to go deeper on?”
How to apply this: In your next pitch, presentation, or interview, give the three-minute version of your answer and then stop. Ask the other person what they want to dig into. Trust them to drive. You learn more about them in their questions than you ever will from your prepared remarks.
5. Don’t Start Fundraising When You Need the Money
This is the single most quotable piece of advice from the entire conversation, and Naama got it from her own mentor.
“Don’t start raising when you need the money. Start a few months before.”
The reason is not what you’d expect. It’s not about leverage or appearing strong. It’s about learning. There is a months-long learning curve to figuring out what kind of investor actually fits your business — VC, angel, strategic, family office, foundation. You can’t shortcut it. And if you start raising when the runway is short, you don’t have the time to learn the lesson before you have to act on it.
This applies far past founders. It’s the same truth for coaches, consultants, freelancers, anyone whose income depends on a yes from someone else. When you need the deal, you can feel it across the table, and so can they.
I’ll be honest — I had to learn this one in my own coaching practice the hard way. There was a stretch where I was selling from a place of “I need this client,” and prospects could feel it before I even got to the offer. The work itself was the same. The posture was different. And the posture is what they were reading.
How to apply this: Identify the next big “ask” on your horizon — a raise, a deal, a role, a partnership — and start the conversations now, while you don’t yet need the answer. Give yourself months, not weeks. The conversations themselves will teach you what to actually ask for by the time it matters.
6. The Mission Has to Be Bigger Than You
Naama and I both got personal at the end of the episode. I asked her what keeps her going through the rejection, the slow fundraising, the constant rebuild. Her answer was something I think every founder, leader, and ambitious woman needs to hear.
“It’s easier when the mission is greater than you, because then you say — it’s not me and my future, it’s the world’s future.”
She told me about how she cooks dinner at home and looks at the small mountain of packaging waste from a meal for two people. That moment, repeated every day, is the engine.
She also pushed back on the idea that money alone can carry you through. Money is a fine reason to start. It is not a strong enough reason to keep going through the grind, the rejection, the rebuilds.
“If I wanted to make money, I wouldn’t be able to go through this. There always has to be something that is keeping you going through the struggles.”
This is something I see in every coaching engagement with a senior woman in tech. The promotions, the salary, the headline outcomes — they help. They are real. But the women who weather the hard quarters are the ones who can name why they’re doing the work in language that isn’t about themselves. The mission is what makes the rejection survivable.
How to apply this: Write one sentence answering “Why am I really doing this?” without using the words money, promotion, recognition, or prove. If you can’t fill in the blank, that’s the first conversation worth having — with yourself, with a coach, with someone you trust. The work gets easier when the answer is clearer.
About Naama Nicotra
Naama Nicotra is the founder and CEO of NakedPak, the first brand to create microplastic-free meals wrapped in edible, hot-water-soluble packaging that leaves no plastic, no waste, and no chemicals behind. She studied industrial design and served as the first training officer in a new IDF commando brigade.
Since recording this episode, NakedPak has reached several milestones:
- New VP R&D Ynon has joined full-time; two part-time R&D scientists complete the R&D team
- Two new advisors: Prof. Yoav Livney (Technion) and Avi Belson, a US food supply chain expert
- FDA compliance confirmed, no regulatory barriers to US market entry
- Pilot machine has arrived and small-scale manufacturing has started
- First US product launch is set for this fall, with pre-orders open now
Links:
- NakedPak: https://www.nakedpak.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naama-nicotra-1b9232174/
What I Took From This Conversation
The first time I recorded with Naama, I walked away thinking about courage. The second time, I walked away thinking about how often we mistake preparation for connection.
We polish the deck. We rehearse the answer. We over-prepare the pitch. And then we walk into rooms and miss the actual thing that determines whether anything lands — which is that the person across from us is asking a specific question, and our job is to figure out which one before we open our mouths.
Naama doesn’t have a louder voice than the founders around her. She has a sharper read of the room. That’s a skill, and it’s one I think every woman in tech leadership needs to build, especially as the rooms we walk into get higher stakes.
I go deeper on my own take in this week’s solo episode, where I share what her story stirred up for me about networking, introversion, and the playbook she was running without realizing it.
You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself — you’ve been polishing decks and pitching credentials and wondering why the rooms you walk into aren’t opening for you — you don’t have to navigate this by yourself.
I work with women in tech leadership every day on exactly these questions. How to make your case without over-explaining. How to walk into rooms where you don’t know anyone and leave with one real connection. How to position yourself as the person to bet on, in the language the person across the table is actually speaking.
Book a promotion strategy call, and we’ll figure out your next move together.
Where to Start if You Want to Be Heard Differently
You don’t need to overhaul anything. A few simple places to begin:
Build the three versions of your pitch. The YOU version (your story, how you think). The NUMBERS version (results, plan, proof). The WHY version (the mission, the change). One paragraph each. Keep them ready.
Stop opening with credentials. In your next high-stakes conversation, ask the other person to share first. Listen for which version of your story is the right one. Then deliver only that one.
Find your one person. The next time you walk into a room of strangers, don’t try to work it. Pick the one person you’re most curious about and start there. One meaningful conversation will do more for your career than fifty business cards.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you pitch investors without a slide deck? Open with a three-minute summary of the business, the opportunity, and what you’re raising. Then stop talking and let the investor ask questions. As Naama Nicotra learned from mentor Sefi Shapira, investors don’t want to be lectured — they want to ask about the specific things they care about. Your deck can be sent before or after the meeting; the meeting itself should be a conversation.
When should you start fundraising? Start a few months before you actually need the money. Use that time to learn which kind of investor fits your business — VC, angel, strategic, family office — and to build the network of referrals investors use to share deals with each other. Founders who start raising when they need the money are forced to act before they’ve learned what to ask for.
How do you walk into a room where you don’t know anyone? Don’t try to work the room. Find one person you can have a real conversation with. Naama describes the move as one drink (to settle), one person, one question. Lead with genuine curiosity about them rather than your own pitch.
What are the three types of investors? Naama groups them by what they care about: founder-focused investors (who care about you, your story, and whether they trust you), business-focused investors (who care about the model, margins, and how you make money), and mission-focused investors (who care about the change you’re trying to make in the world). Your job is to figure out which one is in front of you before you pitch.
Why do women in tech struggle to build the same bonds men do? According to Naama, it’s a numbers problem. The bond between two people requires that they meet and connect — and connection is rare. With so few women in tech, especially at founder and investor levels, the pool of possible deep connections is too small for that bond to form often. The fix is more women supporting each other globally, not just locally.
How do you handle rejection from investors? Make sure you were rejected by the right investors. If the investor’s structure (like a classic VC) doesn’t fit your business model, the rejection isn’t about you — it’s about fit. Don’t treat it as a no on your worth. As Naama puts it, “It’s not a fit” is different from “we don’t believe in you.”
What is NakedPak? NakedPak is the first brand in the world to offer microplastic-free meals wrapped in edible, hot-water-soluble food packaging. You can drop the meal in a pot or microwave with the packaging on, and the packaging dissolves completely — no plastic, no waste, no chemicals.
Why does the mission need to be bigger than you? Because money alone isn’t a strong enough motivator to survive the grind, the rejection, and the constant rebuilds of building something new. Naama’s mission is reducing microplastics in food packaging globally — and that mission, repeated every time she cooks dinner at home, is what keeps her going when the fundraising gets hard.
🎧 Listen to my conversation with Naama Nicotra: Stop Pitching, Start Matching (Take Two with Naama)
🎧 Listen to my solo episode this week: https://youtu.be/Y8QzrDrVRxI
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3iXx3YcQNmI
📝 Read the deeper, more personal version on Substack