The issue with pitch decks is that they represent only the legible part of the fundraising process. The promise of a good pitch deck is that it gets you funded. However, this is far from the truth.
The truth is that the biggest early-ish rounds (pre Series B) were not closed because of the pitch deck, but despite of it.
Actually, the earlier the round the less important does the pitch deck become.
It's the illegible part, that so few talk about and that can't be shared that is the main driver. It's the social reality surrounding the founders and the round. It's the whisper and rumors inside the investor community, who makes the intro, the medium of the intro (phone or email) and many other small things.
A fantastic description of how the process of how founders should run their companies. Being a CEO myself, I wish I'd run into this article earlier, as I strongly believe in instilling autonomy and responsibility in my team as well as that best decisions evolve when I involve the whole team.
I couldn't agree more: It's either no clear way to monetize or very hard to no access, such as the healthcare market. In healthcare everybody agrees that it is "ripe" for disruption and that to do well you need to do good. But there's just no access to it, with all the bureaucracy. This implies that investment need is high and iteration periods are long. (Note: I'm from Germany. But while the US system is much more open than over here, it also super tough in the US to launch a "meaningful" (read: not a fitness/recreational) healthcare business.)
Puh...I'm not sure if I like that. Yes for skimming a text it might be useful, but then why not just write a very good description/summary at the top or bullet-point conclusion at the bottom.
On the other hand, collapsible blog posts could help the writer. For instance after writing a blog post I would love if in iAWriter or WriteMonkey I could collapse all the paragraphs to just their respective first sentence. If the collapsed text would still bring my argument across I did a good job, if not I'd have to rework it.
The truth is that the biggest early-ish rounds (pre Series B) were not closed because of the pitch deck, but despite of it.
Actually, the earlier the round the less important does the pitch deck become.
It's the illegible part, that so few talk about and that can't be shared that is the main driver. It's the social reality surrounding the founders and the round. It's the whisper and rumors inside the investor community, who makes the intro, the medium of the intro (phone or email) and many other small things.