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Hey friends,

I have had the privilege of interviewing more than 50 VCs (Managing Partners, GPs, or Partners, not counting Associates/Principals).

I try to ask different questions according to the fund size, strategy, sector, experience, AUM, etc., but there are a few standard questions that I love asking all of them.

One of those questions is, ‘What is your go-to slide that you look for in every pitch deck?’ I loved the answers. To avoid making this another boring read on VCs’ opinions on pitch decks, I’ve grouped their thoughts.

The ‘Infamous’ Problem Slide:

This is kind of clichéd, but everyone mentioned they look at the Problem Slide.

Some founders overload the problem slide with excessive details such as the competitive landscape, market size, and customer segments. While these elements are important, the problem slide should focus on clearly and concisely defining the problem.

It’s important for founders to clarify who experiences the problem and how they are currently dealing with it. The pitch shouldn’t delve too deeply into customer segmentation or marketing strategies on this slide—that content belongs elsewhere in the deck.

Surprisingly, most decks have a very poorly crafted problem slide. The lack of context, no understanding of the audience, being too generic, etc., are among the main points they mentioned.

Why ‘This Team’:

I lost count of how many times I heard this one. Everyone, literally everyone, unanimously mentioned this slide, regardless of the vertical or anything else.

I asked, ‘What do they look for in the team’s slide? Usually, that’s just a few headshots (please keep it to a few, co-founders only and/or maybe some advisors. Don’t add your whole freelancing team and friends there).

The reason for looking at this slide is to figure out the Founder-Market Fit. Suppose you are building a next-gen healthtech startup, but you have never experienced the problem before, have never worked in the sector, never talked to potential customers, etc.

That potentially means your odds of succeeding are as low as mine or any John Doe. What VCs are looking for is the unfair advantage. What makes you the ideal candidate to lead this startup?

Why ‘Now’:

That was an interesting one. A few people mentioned this slide. What they are looking for is what makes you think now is the time to build ‘your solution’. Let’s say AI, for now. 20 years ago, people were doing PhDs in AI; it was only recently that it became available to the masses. Same tech, different eras. Different awareness. Different audience and supporting ecosystem.

So, it’s important to understand why the disrupting tech you are building is a good fit for the time.

The GTM:

About 33% mentioned this slide, but out of those, 100% of Consumer (CPG) investors mentioned it. The reason for that is the VCs know it’s not like your traditional SaaS, and the revenues aren’t going to be predictable. Most founders’ GTM is Meta ads, Google Ads, UGC ads, and TikTok/Insta.

Well, that’s not a great-looking GTM.

GTM is all about motions. Suppose you are launching a consumer brand, you probably have a very strong Instagram or TikTok following. That means you will have an unfair advantage (more on that at the end). Otherwise, just saying you will run tons of ads is not going to cut it.

The Competitive Landscape:

This is a very tactical slide which is optional too. But, I would highly recommend it. Ideally, this should be a 2x2 matrix plotting your near and far-off competitors, potential acquirers, etc. Please don’t say you don’t have competition. That is a huge red flag 🚩

The VCs see so many decks every day, and it’s not possible to say you don’t have competition. As one of the guests put it, “There’s always competition. It’s more about whether you are aware of it or not.”

Even if you really don’t have a direct competitor, listing all the potential or far-off competitors is important. It’s a potential exit that VCs can look for. Remember, no one wants to be the last money in. No VC wants to be the last check. It’s like musical chairs.

Notable Mention:

A Big NO to Market Sizing

Even though VCs look for this slide, they don’t believe the numbers you put there. They will do their own market sizing, and putting up inflated numbers doesn’t mean a whole lot. This one is a weird slide, to be honest. I mean, you have to put it there in the deck, and without it, the deck is incomplete. But, it’s almost certain that

Conclusion:

Building a VC backed startup is a whole different skillset compared to a bootstrapped agency. One is no better than the other but its a different ball game. Venture Capital as an asset class relies heavily on power law. That means VCs, by nature of their job, have to pick great founders. Not great companies. For that reason, they look for all kinds of competitive and unfair advantages for the founding team.

If you have worked in a spacetech company for 10 years, you will understand the problem, sector, customers, etc. way quickly than anyone else. That means you will have a head start without wasting ton of capital in making mistakes and learning.

You can argue all day long on the thesis but an average VC screen 10,000+ decks yearly. And they barely invest in 20 companies yearly (early stage). Thats 0.2%. So, they actually need to find reasons to reject startups. Thats just the nature of the job.

Latest from our Prodcircle Podcast

I had an immense pleasure of hosting Kevin Van Gundy on the podcast. Kevin was the ex COO of Vercel, previously worked at Neo4j, Domino datalab and Tray.io. KVG is now working on Hypermode. We talked about pricing, founder led sales, enterprise Saas, GTM motions, etc.
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Its a masterclass for founders.

Watch the full episode here

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