The One Slide in Your Pitch Deck Investors Will Never Believe
You might think you can fool venture capitalists, but you’ll only be fooling yourself
I was practicing my fundraising pitch with a friend. He was a fellow founder who’d already raised $5 million dollars for his startup. In contrast, I’d raised exactly zero dollars for mine, and I was desperate for help.
“I want you to be honest,” I told him when I finished my pitch. “Whatever I’ve been doing hasn’t been working. You seem to know what you’re doing, so tell me how I’m screwing up.”
“You’re sure you want me to be honest?” he asked.
“Brutally honest,” I assured him. “Don’t pull any punches.”
He sighed. “OK,” he said, “the truth is, nobody is ever going to invest in you because you’ve got an obvious bulls#*t slide. It’s not fooling anyone.”
“A bulls#*t slide?” I repeated. “What the heck is that?”
“You know,” he shrugged, “your bulls#*t slide. It’s the slide where you’re trying to impress investors, but you’re overreaching, and they can see right through it.”
“And which slide is that for me?” I asked.
“Isn’t that obvious?” he said. “It’s the one where you’ve included logos for a bunch of…
