Is the pitch deck culture making founders worse at building businesses?
8 comments
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.
This is exactly right and there's a tell that I've noticed after reviewing hundreds of decks and talking to a lot of founders.
You can figure out pretty quickly whether a founder has been forced to actually sell something or whether they've been living in pitch mode. And the difference shows up in a really specific way.
Ask them about their customers. The founders who had to sell to survive talk about specific people. They know the person's name, what their actual objection was, why the third conversation went differently than the first two, what made them finally sign. The detail is almost uncomfortable sometimes.
The pitch mode founders talk about personas. "Our customer is a mid-market ops manager who struggles with workflow inefficiency." Technically an answer. Completely useless information that tells you they've been reading about their customer rather than talking to them.
The brutal thing is that early fundraising success can actually mask this for a long time. A founder who raises a seed round before they've had to sell anything gets 18 months of runway to stay in pitch mode. They raise the seed talking about potential. They raise the A talking about momentum. By the time you're at the B someone finally asks a hard question and there's nothing underneath.
The founders who couldn't raise early and had to go find a paying customer instead got the most important feedback the startup world has. Someone who has no obligation to be nice to you decided your thing was worth money. That's it. That's the whole game early on and most of the ecosystem is set up to let founders avoid finding that out for as long as possible.
You can figure out pretty quickly whether a founder has been forced to actually sell something or whether they've been living in pitch mode. And the difference shows up in a really specific way.
Ask them about their customers. The founders who had to sell to survive talk about specific people. They know the person's name, what their actual objection was, why the third conversation went differently than the first two, what made them finally sign. The detail is almost uncomfortable sometimes.
The pitch mode founders talk about personas. "Our customer is a mid-market ops manager who struggles with workflow inefficiency." Technically an answer. Completely useless information that tells you they've been reading about their customer rather than talking to them.
The brutal thing is that early fundraising success can actually mask this for a long time. A founder who raises a seed round before they've had to sell anything gets 18 months of runway to stay in pitch mode. They raise the seed talking about potential. They raise the A talking about momentum. By the time you're at the B someone finally asks a hard question and there's nothing underneath.
The founders who couldn't raise early and had to go find a paying customer instead got the most important feedback the startup world has. Someone who has no obligation to be nice to you decided your thing was worth money. That's it. That's the whole game early on and most of the ecosystem is set up to let founders avoid finding that out for as long as possible.
What feedback did your pitch analyzer product give to this pitch about itself?
Ha good question and a fair one.
We ran it. Scored 71 on the first pass. The analyzer flagged traction as the weakest dimension which is accurate. We have users but early revenue so the metrics aren't there yet. It also flagged that our moat narrative was asserted not demonstrated. Also fair. Data flywheel defensibility is real but we hadn't quantified it properly in the deck.
We fixed both. Rescored at 79. Still not above the investor visibility threshold which is the point honestly. The tool doesn't let you charm your way past weak fundamentals. You either have the business or you don't.
Worth noting we're not actively raising right now so there's no incentive to game it. We ran it because we wanted to know where the actual gaps were. Turns out the score told us the same thing our customers were telling us anyway.
The things it couldn't penalize us for are the things that are actually strong. The framework is built on a real investment rubric we use at 3P Ventures. The problem is real and well documented. The team has the right background for it. So short answer: the pitch has the same weaknesses the business has right now. Early traction, real product, credible framework. The score reflects that pretty accurately
We ran it. Scored 71 on the first pass. The analyzer flagged traction as the weakest dimension which is accurate. We have users but early revenue so the metrics aren't there yet. It also flagged that our moat narrative was asserted not demonstrated. Also fair. Data flywheel defensibility is real but we hadn't quantified it properly in the deck.
We fixed both. Rescored at 79. Still not above the investor visibility threshold which is the point honestly. The tool doesn't let you charm your way past weak fundamentals. You either have the business or you don't.
Worth noting we're not actively raising right now so there's no incentive to game it. We ran it because we wanted to know where the actual gaps were. Turns out the score told us the same thing our customers were telling us anyway.
The things it couldn't penalize us for are the things that are actually strong. The framework is built on a real investment rubric we use at 3P Ventures. The problem is real and well documented. The team has the right background for it. So short answer: the pitch has the same weaknesses the business has right now. Early traction, real product, credible framework. The score reflects that pretty accurately
Goodharts law?
Exactly that.
The deck was supposed to be a map of the business. Once it became the thing you optimize, it stopped mapping anything real.
The coaching industry monetizes the optimization. Which is fine, but it means the signal keeps degrading. Investors adapt by discounting polish. Founders respond by adding more polish. Classic arms race.
The only fix is evaluation criteria that the founder can't easily game. Which is harder to build than it sounds.
The deck was supposed to be a map of the business. Once it became the thing you optimize, it stopped mapping anything real.
The coaching industry monetizes the optimization. Which is fine, but it means the signal keeps degrading. Investors adapt by discounting polish. Founders respond by adding more polish. Classic arms race.
The only fix is evaluation criteria that the founder can't easily game. Which is harder to build than it sounds.
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]