I raised $50K from an angel investor after practicing my pitch with an AI version of him.

This might sound crazy but it worked, so I'm sharing the tactic.

Before my angel meeting last month, I did deep research on the investor:

• His LinkedIn profile
• 3 podcast appearances where he interviewed founders
• His Twitter takes on early-stage startups
• A blog post about what he looks for in deals

Then I fed all of it into an AI and created a simulated version of him to practice my pitch against.

Spent two days rehearsing with "him" until I could predict his objections.

On the actual call:

• He asked about GTM in a very specific way. I'd heard him ask the same question on a podcast.
• Had my answer ready. He pushed back on market size. I'd already rehearsed that objection multiple times.
• He wanted to know "why you?" – I knew from his content he values founder-market fit over credentials, so I leaned into that.

He committed on the call. $50K wired last week.

Same pitch deck. Same me. The only difference was how prepared I was.

Walking into a pitch already knowing how someone thinks, what they care about, and how they communicate changes everything.

Anyone else do this level of research before investor calls? Curious if I'm overthinking it or if this is just standard practice now.