I’ve been watching the new season of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula, and I think every startup founder should watch it.
If you haven’t seen the show, imagine RuPaul’s Drag Race had a baby with a low-budget horror movie.
Drag queens dressed in rotting flesh, covered in fake blood and slime, creating some of the most outrageous performances you’ll ever see on television.
It’s disgusting. I love it.
And watching the latest season, I found myself wishing more startup founders had the courage to be that interesting.
Not because I want someone to deliver an investor pitch covered in fake blood. Although, depending on the business, I’m open to it.
But because I’ve watched too many founders take a fascinating business and somehow turn it into the dullest presentation imaginable.
They’ve got incredible stories, strong opinions and a problem they’re obsessed with solving. Then they get on stage, and all that personality disappears.
I think Dragula has something to teach us about why.
What a drag queen drinking mop water can teach you about being memorable
In the second season of Dragula, contestant Biqtch Puddin delivered one of the most revolting performances I’ve ever seen.
For the grand finale, contestants had to create performances around three themes: glamour, horror and filth.
Biqtch’s idea for filth was a janitor.
She proceeded to lick filthy surfaces, drink disgusting mop water and pull a hairball out of a drain before eating it.
I’m not exaggerating when I say it was revolting.
During judging, the Boulet Brothers recalled watching crew members nearly throw up. The judges were struggling to keep their stomachs together too.
And they absolutely loved it.
Biqtch had taken a simple character and made it unforgettable by committing completely to the idea. Years later, people are still talking about that bloody janitor.
Now, I’m not suggesting you drink mop water at your next investor pitch. Please don’t.
But there’s something worth learning here.
Biqtch knew exactly what she wanted the audience to feel, and every choice served that reaction. The character, the bucket, the dirty water and the hairball all contributed to the same idea.
When was the last time you thought that carefully about what you wanted an investor to feel during your pitch?
Not just what you wanted them to know, but what you wanted them to feel.
Do you feel like you disappear?
I’ve met founders who are absolutely electric when they talk about their businesses.
They’ll tell you about the customer who made them realise something was terribly wrong with their industry, or the ridiculous number of hoops they had to jump through to solve a problem that should have been simple.
They get excited. They swear a little. They tell you about the first version of their product that barely worked.
And suddenly, you’re leaning forward because you want to know what happened next.
Then you watch them pitch.
“At our company, we’re leveraging innovative technology to deliver scalable solutions in a rapidly evolving market.”
Mate. WHERE DID YOU GO?
It’s like someone took the founder, put them through a corporate washing machine and hung them out to dry.
The interesting customer story has disappeared to make room for another slide about the technology. The frustration that inspired the business has been replaced by a market opportunity diagram.
And the founder who was making you laugh five minutes ago is now reading bullet points like they’re delivering an annual report.
I understand why it happens.
Pitching to investors is intimidating. You’re asking people to judge your ideas, your business and, to some extent, you. Of course you want to look credible.
But somewhere along the way, founders seem to have decided that being credible means being boring.
And I’d love to know who told them that.
Give people a reason to care about your business
One of the things I love about Biqtch’s performance is how simple the idea was.
She didn’t need to explain the character or give the audience a complicated backstory. The moment she started cleaning filthy surfaces with that mop, you understood exactly what was happening.
Every new detail made it worse.
And by the time she was drinking from the bucket, the entire audience was feeling exactly what she’d intended.
Compare that with how many founders explain their businesses.
They describe their products as innovative platforms, talk about driving operational efficiencies and promise to transform entire industries.
But nobody goes home and tells their partner they desperately need an innovative platform that drives operational efficiencies.
They do complain about spending four miserable hours copying numbers between spreadsheets.
That’s the story I want to hear.
How do you compare?
Imagine two founders pitching a product that helps medical clinics reduce administrative work.
The first opens with a slide about the Australian healthcare market, followed by impressive statistics and a description of their software.
The second tells you about a receptionist spending four hours on a Friday afternoon copying patient information between three different systems.
Four hours, just moving information from one computer to another. And by the time she’d finished, there was still a pile of work waiting for Monday.
Which business do you want to hear more about?
The first founder might have a fantastic product, but they’ve asked you to care about a market before giving you a reason to care about the people in it.
The second has shown you a problem you can immediately understand. You can picture the receptionist, feel the frustration and see what a better solution would mean for her.
That’s what a good story does
And there’s research suggesting it can make a difference to investors.
In June 2026, researchers Richard Gruss, Zach Collier and Robert Canter published a study examining how founding stories influence entrepreneurial pitches.
They analysed 486 pitches from Shark Tank, then conducted an experiment comparing pitches with and without founding stories.
What they found is that pitches containing relevant founding stories were more likely to succeed.
Now, you don’t have to take that and go replace your financial projections with a dramatic monologue about your childhood.
Investors still need to understand your market, business model and evidence that the company can succeed.
But if you’ve got a fantastic story about why your company exists, why on earth would you hide it?
I’ve had jokes die in front of an audience. It’s horrible.
I’ve spent years performing and teaching theatre and improvisation, and let me tell you, there are few experiences quite as humbling as delivering a joke you’re absolutely convinced is hilarious, only to be met with complete silence.
You say the line, and nobody laughs.
You wait another second, just in case the audience is taking a moment to appreciate your genius.
Still nothing.
At this point, you’re considering whether it’s physically possible to crawl into your own mouth and disappear.
I’ve been there.
So when a founder tells me they’re nervous about trying something different in a presentation, I understand. You don’t want to look foolish or take a risk that makes an already stressful situation worse.
But here’s what I’ve learnt from performing.
Some of my biggest laughs came from lines I was almost too embarrassed to say.
I’d have an idea that seemed a little too strange, too silly or too unexpected, and I’d hesitate because once you say something on stage, you can’t take it back.
Sometimes those ideas failed spectacularly. But sometimes they got a bigger laugh than anything I’d carefully planned.
If I’d rejected every idea that made me uncomfortable, I would have missed some of the best moments I’ve ever had on stage.
And I think the same principle applies to presenting. You can’t make an interesting choice without accepting that it might not work.
That doesn’t mean you should stand in front of investors and say whatever comes into your head. Your audience matters, and you need to earn their trust.
But there’s a difference between making a thoughtful creative choice and playing everything so safe that nobody feels anything.
Three ways to make your next pitch more interesting
If you’re preparing to pitch your business, I’d encourage you to try three things before you start polishing your slides.
1. Tell me what made you angry enough to start a company
Forget the impressive company description for a moment and think about why you actually started.
Was there a customer who couldn’t get the help they needed? Did you spend years watching your industry accept a ridiculous problem as normal? Did something happen that made you think, “Surely there has to be a better way”?
Tell me that story.
Not the version that’s been rewritten by six people and approved by your advisory board. The version you’d tell a friend over dinner.
That’s often where the interesting part of your business lives.
2. Decide what you want people to feel
Remember Biqtch Puddin and the mop water?
She wanted to disgust the audience, and she committed to it. Your pitch needs a similarly clear purpose, even if the emotion is completely different.
Do you want investors to feel frustrated that a problem still exists? Excited about an opportunity nobody has noticed? Surprised by how much money or time your product saves?
Choose one moment where you want the audience to experience that feeling, then think about what you can show or say to make it happen.
It’s not enough to have an impressive idea. You need to make sure the audience understands why it matters.
3. Practise a version that’s too much
This is one of my favourite ways to help people discover more interesting choices.
Take a section of your pitch and deliberately exaggerate it.
Tell the customer story like you’re furious about what happened. Explain your product like you’re the most excited person in the world. Deliver your opening like you’re trying to convince a friend you’ve discovered something unbelievable.
Go further than you normally would. Make yourself a little uncomfortable.
Then do it again, but dial it back.
You might find that the version you thought was ridiculously over-the-top had more energy and personality than the one you’d carefully rehearsed.
You don’t have to use every exaggerated choice, but you might discover one gesture, one line or one way of telling the story that makes the whole presentation better.
Your personality isn’t a problem you need to fix
What I love about Dragula is that the performers aren’t trying to appeal to everybody.
Biqtch Puddin dressed as a janitor, drank filthy mop water and made an entire room of people feel physically sick. It was a ridiculous idea, delivered with complete commitment.
I think founders can learn something from that.
You can be quiet, thoughtful and reserved and still give an absolutely brilliant pitch. But you do need to give people a reason to care.
I’d much rather watch a founder stumble through a story they’re genuinely passionate about than flawlessly monotone their way through twenty slides they’ve memorised.
Because at the end of those twenty slides, I want to remember more than the size of your market.
I want to remember why you started, understand what makes your business different and feel at least a little of the excitement that made you decide building a company was worth all the trouble.
Which brings me back to Dragula. There are people on that show who’ve spent weeks creating horrifying performances, knowing full well they might walk on stage and have the judges tell them it’s rubbish.
And they do it anyway.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Australia, a founder is removing the most interesting story from their pitch because they’re worried it might be a bit too much.
Come on.
You’ve already taken the enormous risk of starting a business. Don’t become afraid now to show people why they should care.
