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Is the pitch deck culture making founders worse at building businesses?

9 points

8 hours ago

| 1 comment

I've reviewed hundreds of decks as an early-stage fund manager. The decks have gotten better every year. The businesses underneath them haven't kept pace.

My observation: founders optimize for the 5-minute impression. Investors evaluate for the 5-year business. The pitch coaching industry selects for performance over clarity. The best decks I've seen are often less polished — but they answer every investor question before it's asked.

Curious whether others — founders, investors, operators — see the same pattern. Is the deck a useful forcing function or a distraction from the actual work?

I wrote about this here if useful context: [https://www.pitchvault.ai/pitch-intelligence/pitch-deck-performance-vs-business]

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codingdave

3 hours ago

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I think it is a lower level problem than that. "Founders" fall into the trap of thinking that getting funding is a fundamental aspect of building something new, when it is not. Instead of building a solid business plan, then applying funding if and where needed to resolve constraints of carrying out the plan, they make their plans with funding as the primary goal, and only later determine whether or not it is actually a viable business.