Pitch Deck Series Part 6: What to send ahead of time

When building the funnel for a fundraising process, every entrepreneur will undoubtedly be asked at some point to send information to a prospective investor prior to meeting with that investor. This may not be the case with every investor, but a large percentage of VCs I know will request some info upfront.

Regardless of whether it’s a warm intro or a cold email, the question I am routinely asked by entrepreneurs is what they should send and how much info should they provide. My suggestion is always to craft an email with a short blurb about the company and include a condensed version of the deck.

Let’s talk about each of these two components.

Short Description about the company

You want to provide something in writing that is quick and easy for the reader to understand what you do and why they should care. In other words, your goal is to provide context about your company and generate enough interest to entice them to schedule a meeting. In order to do this, the description should be clear and include what the company does, the progress the company has made, and why your company is relevant for that specific investor. If sending to a friend to make a warm intro to a VC, you should assume they will simply forward the email on to that investor so make it easy for them to do exactly that.

When writing this short blurb on your company, keep the following in mind:

• Keep it short. Ideally 4–6 sentences. Your goal is to pique their interest, not explain every detail of the business.
• One or two sentence description that clearly articulates what you do. Avoid buzzwords and vague language. Get to the core of your value proposition so that it’s easy to understand immediately.
• Demonstrate progress that shows the momentum of the company. Ideally this is something quantifiable although that is not always possible at very early stages. This traction could be in the form of revenue growth, product development, user retention, or any other metric that might generate interest in what you are building.
• You should also include why you want to talk to that specific investor. The more relevant and more personal the better. For example, maybe this individual was the lead investor in another company that you deeply admire and you believe you could benefit a lot from their experience. Another idea is to reference something that investor has written/tweeted/podcasted about that you thought was insightful and relevant to your business. And yes, I am suggesting you customize each message rather than provide generic response for each investor. It will take more time, but your odds of success will improve dramatically if this is done in a thoughtful manner.
• If you have a video, include a link in the description. Well-made videos are a great way to tell your story and show your product in action. The video should be no more than a couple minutes and should be about the product. Do not include a video of your entire pitch.
• Include how much capital you are looking to raise.

Condensed Version of the Deck

While the short blurb of the company is pretty standard and universal, the topic of whether or not to send a deck ahead of time can be rather controversial. There are a lot of people that suggest founders never send a deck ahead of a meeting. Personally, while I believe those people bring up valid concerns, I fall squarely into the other camp and believe founders should always be willing to send materials prior to meeting with an investor.

Let’s start with why an investor would prefer to review a pitch deck before agreeing to take a meeting. Keep in mind, I can only speak from personal experience, but I know I always prefer to have some material to review prior to our first meeting for two purposes.

The first is it allows me to filter whether or not this opportunity is fit for the fund I work for. We invest at specific stages and in specific industries. Even within those industries, we often have existing thesis around where the market is headed. After reviewing over 10,000 decks in my career, I can tell rather quickly if the company is in the right sector or stage for my firm. Notice, this has nothing to do with the quality of the company, but rather its simply about assessing does this company fit within the parameters I know our firm invests in. Anything outside those parameters and I cannot take that company to my partners regardless of how good the company is.

In some cases, I can filter an opportunity simply from a well written description of the company. The challenge, however, is that rarely does the blurb I described above contain all the basic info I need to make sure it’s a fit. The challenge for entrepreneurs is every investor filters opportunities using different criteria so it’s difficult to know ahead of time exactly what to cover. Hence, a short deck often times makes it easier for a VC to filter.

Knowing whether their company is a fit or not, saves the entrepreneur time. I love talking with founders and learning about new companies, even ones that fall outside our scope. However, I never want to waste valuable time for founders by meeting with them if I know there is no way we can participate in this round. That is time I am taking away from them building the product, talking to customers, or meeting with investors that could be a fit and if I can save them that time, I feel it’s only right that I do so.

The second reason I prefer to have a deck ahead of time is that it makes the meeting far more productive. By giving me a chance to review the material prior to the call, I have some context and can ask much better questions during the meeting. I much prefer our meeting to be a back and forth conversation rather than a slide by slide walkthrough. It’s much harder to have that type of conversation if I haven’t had time to review and identify areas I want to drill down into ahead of time. I can make far better use of our time in the first meeting if I have more information upfront.

However, as I previously mentioned, I routinely hear people give entrepreneurs advice not to send a deck ahead of time. I will admit how a VC receives the deck, from a trusted source vs cold email, often times does matter, so this topic isn’t cut and dry. However, the topic of warm vs cold intros is a bit out of scope for this discussion and either way, I would still advocate for sending a deck should a VC ask for one.

There are three main categories of arguments that I typically hear as to why an entrepreneur should NOT send their deck ahead of time, so I want to address each of these one by one. They are, 1) sending a deck ahead of time makes it easy for the investor to pass, 2) the info will get leaked and made public, and 3) having the deck ahead of time weakens the presentation.

Easy for them to pass

A few paragraphs ago I just talked about how having a deck ahead of time makes it easier to filter if a company is a fit or not and thus passing on the investment quicker. Keep in mind that easier and quicker are not the same thing. Doesn’t matter if I read your deck or spend an hour with you in person, if you aren’t at the right stage or industry it will lead to a pass either way.

While receiving a pass as a founder always sucks, getting this indication from a VC sooner rather than later is actually a benefit for the entrepreneur. Sending an email with a deck could actually save you valuable time and allow you to focus on investors that might actually invest.

Info will get leaked

Does info get leaked? Absolutely. While I will never share any info about a company outside my firm without that founders’ explicit approval, not everyone operates in such a manner. However, the fact that your deck might be shared with people without your knowledge should not prevent you from sending a deck to any investor.

Before I explain my rationale, I do want to caveat this argument with the fact that I believe you should not include anything that is top secret in the deck. There is no need to include confidential info about the product or financials in a deck you send out ahead of time. There are a number of things that are perfectly ok to omit if you are afraid of that info getting out.

However, with that said, if someone can recreate your business or product simply by looking at a 10-page deck and execute on it better than you can, you have much bigger issues than worrying about info being leaked. If it’s that easily copied, it’s not fundable to begin with. Your edge doesn’t come from your idea, it comes from competitive advantage that your team inherently has (so called founder-market fit) and it comes from your ability to execute.

Sending it ahead of time weakens the presentation

The thought here is that if the investor has already read through the entirety of your deck before you present, the result will be a “spoiler” effect that diminishes the power of the story you’re trying to tell.

I completely disagree with this sentiment.

First off, I have been wowed by entrepreneurs even when I knew exactly what they did prior to ever meeting them. I have also been totally unimpressed with founders that I had no idea what they did prior to the meeting.

The first meeting with a VC isn’t about your idea. The meeting is an opportunity for you to showcase yourself, the progress you have made, and the market opportunity you are addressing. At the early stages I’m betting on the team. I’m betting on why now. I’m betting on your ability to execute. If you are depending on some magical punchline in your deck to get me interested, you have already failed. YOU need to impress me, not your deck. And the exceptional founders can do that regardless of whether I already know everything about the business or know nothing at all.

Second, if your plan for our meeting is for you to walk me through slide by slide of your deck, that’s a low probability of success regardless of whether I have seen the deck ahead of time or not. The goal of the meeting isn’t to present a book report. The goal is to get the investor interested and engaged. Slides can help with that, but only if they are used as additional context during a conversation. In fact, I would argue that if you make it all the way through your deck in a 30min meeting, that meeting actually didn’t go very well because you didn’t get the investor interested enough to ask questions and spark a conversation.

For me, having a chance to review the deck ahead of time allows me to go deeper on specific topics during our meeting which gives you the opportunity to really get me interested. Now the conversation can be tailored to address my specific concerns. I don’t think providing a deck ahead of time to an investor weakens your presentation, it strengthens it.

So, should you send a deck ahead of time? Absolutely. Now I will admit, there is a difference between the deck you send ahead and the deck you present with, but that’s a topic for my next post.