Your pitch deck gets less attention than you think. DocSend found that average investor time per deck fell to just two minutes and 24 seconds in late 2023.[2] Some accelerators, like a16z speedrun, ask for a deck with your application,[10] and almost every investor you meet afterward will want one. Here are the seven mistakes that most often waste those two minutes, and how to fix them.
What the data says
In DocSend's research on pre-seed decks, successful decks were viewed for over four minutes, versus about one minute and 30 seconds for unsuccessful ones. The typical deck ran about 20 pages with about 50 words per slide.[1] Investors spend more time on decks that hold their attention, and quickly leave the ones that don't.
1. Too Long, Too Wordy
The most common mistake is trying to say everything. YC partner Aaron Harris tells founders to "strive for clarity and concision. This is not the right place to write a treatise on your market or world philosophy."[3] Kevin Hale lists "too much text" and "excessive explanations and caveats" among the things to avoid, and says slides should be "legible, simple, and obvious."[4]
The fix: One idea per slide, in as few words as possible. If a slide needs a paragraph to make sense, it's two slides or none.
2. A Problem Nobody Can Picture
If the investor doesn't understand the problem in the first few seconds, nothing after it matters. Kevin Hale warns: "If they don't get your point right away, they will check their email."[4] Michael Seibel says your pitch should be "like baby food": simple enough to understand instantly.[5]
The fix: Describe the problem from your customer's point of view, with a concrete example. "Restaurant owners throw away food every night because they can't predict demand" is easier to picture than "inefficiencies in F&B supply chains."
3. Jargon and Buzzwords
Seibel tells founders to "eliminate jargon, acronyms, marketing speak, and any ambiguous terms such as 'platform'," adding: "You don't need to sound cool. You need to be clear."[5] Paul Graham is even blunter about applications: "We're immune to marketing-speak; to us it's just noise."[6]
The fix: Read every slide out loud to someone outside your industry. Replace any word they ask about.
4. Vague Traction
"Growing fast" and "strong interest" tell an investor nothing. Seibel says he's "much more interested in progress than genius ideas."[5] Paul Graham's advice for YC applications applies to decks too: "the best answers are the most specific."[6]
The fix: Show real numbers with time frames: revenue, users, growth rate, retention. A small number that's real and growing beats a big number that isn't explained.
5. The "1% of a Huge Market" Slide
Saying you only need 1% of a $100 billion market is one of the most recognizable red flags in a deck. As Lak Ananth of N47 puts it, "The real problem with 'we just need 1%' isn't the math. It's the mindset."[9] Seibel recommends bottom-up market sizing because it avoids "a common top down pitfall, which is not narrowing down the customer enough."[5]
The fix: Count your actual customers. Number of target customers × what each one would pay is more convincing than any analyst report.
6. Filler Slides
Every slide that doesn't help your case costs you attention. Harris puts it plainly: "Nobody cares about your advisors."[3] In DocSend's research, none of the successful pre-seed decks included a table of contents.[1] And Hale lists animations and memes among things to cut.[4]
The fix: Use a proven structure and nothing more. Sequoia's well-known outline covers company purpose, problem, solution, why now, market potential, competition, business model, team, financials, and vision.[8]
7. No Clear Ask
Many decks end without saying what the founder actually wants. Seibel: "There's no need to dance around the ask."[5] Harris: "Tell the investor how much money you need, and what it gets you."[3]
The fix: End with how much you're raising, what milestones it gets you to, and how long it lasts.
A Quick Checklist
- Can someone outside your industry understand the first slide in five seconds?
- Does every slide have one clear point?
- Is your traction shown with specific numbers and time frames?
- Is your market sized from the bottom up?
- Have you cut every slide that doesn't change an investor's mind?
- Does the last slide say how much you're raising and what it's for?
Paul Graham summed it up: "if you can't explain your plans concisely, you don't really understand them."[7] A short, clear deck shows investors you understand your business, and in a two-minute read, it's what gets you a meeting.
XRaze helps you turn your startup's story into clear answers for accelerator applications and the deck that goes with them.
Sources
- [1]DocSend pitch deck research — Dropbox DocSend
- [2]DocSend 2023 year-end data (press release) — DocSend via Stock Titan
- [3]How to build your seed round pitch deck (Aaron Harris) — Y Combinator
- [4]How to design a better pitch deck (Kevin Hale) — Y Combinator
- [5]How to Pitch Your Company (Michael Seibel) — Y Combinator
- [6]How to Apply to Y Combinator (Paul Graham) — Y Combinator
- [7]How to Convince Investors — Paul Graham
- [8]Writing a business plan — Sequoia Capital
- [9]Why "all we need is 1% of this very large market" is a red flag — N47
- [10]speedrun FAQ — a16z speedrun