VC Minute
VC Minute
263. Your Deck is Too in the Weeds, feat. Justin Izzo from Dropbox DocSend
Text your thoughts directly to Rich.
You don't have critical distance from your business to be able to get out of the weeds. Get feedback on your deck from someone with that critical distance.
About Justin Izzo
Justin is the Lead Data and Trends Analyst at Dropbox Docsend and trusted insights professional with 15+ years of research and leadership experience. He is the driving force behind DocSend's pitch deck metrics and annual slide-by-slide analysis reports, also hosting pitch deck teardowns to provide founders with actionable next steps. Justin loves designing research and strategies that leverage his unique Ph.D. background in the humanities and social sciences. He has an expert understanding of narrative, language, and culture coupled with a talent for deriving human insights from the social world.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-izzo/
About DocSend
DocSend enables companies to share business-critical documents with ease and get real-time actionable feedback. With DocSend's security and control, startup founders, investors, executives, and business development professionals can build business partnerships that have a lasting impact. Over 30,000 customers of all sizes use DocSend today. Learn more at docsend.com.
About AVL Growth Partners
AVL Growth Partners, founded in 2009, is the leading fractional Finance and Accounting firm supporting organizations in pivoting from growth to scale. AVL brings an experienced team of CFOs, Controllers, and Accountants to your organization, delivering transparent, strategic actions for short and long-term success. Transform your financial approach affordably with AVL, supporting companies coast to coast - get to know AVL Growth Partners at avlgrowth.com. (Sponsored)
About SpringTime Ventures
SpringTime Ventures seeds high-growth startups in healthcare, fintech & insurtech, and logistics & supply chain. We look for founders with domain expertise, forging a path with a truly transformative technology. We only invest in software-based businesses in the USA. We bring a people-focused approach, work quickly, and reach conviction independently. Our initial check size is $600k. You can learn more about us and our approach.
This is a fundraising conundrum that I've observed a lot of recently, as many founders have pivoted quickly to AI first startups. is that they can get too in the weeds with their narratives. founders are often bright and dedicated, to running their business, and to growing it, getting traction wherever possible. But that can often mean that they're too close to their material. Why is that a problem for startup founders? it's because when it comes time to externalize your own thinking about your business, You don't necessarily realize that your audience, be they specialist VCs in your field or generalist VCs, angel investors, your friends and family, you might kick in a few thousand dollars for a round, simply don't know as much about your business and its problems or its opportunities as you do and as your team does. and what this can often lead to in a pitch deck is muddled messaging. muddled messaging that on the one hand doesn't communicate Ideas clearly on a given slide, but also is, at the same time, too close to material that is dense or complex, especially when it comes to LLMs, anything AI related that folks on the outside don't necessarily understand. founders don't have enough critical distance from their material, from their business, and from the ins and outs of it. of building that business to communicate the broad stakes and the narrative of a fundraise efficiently and effectively to their audience and this can lead to pitch decks that are either overly long, overly wordy, or that lack the Snappy focus, that's needed to get folks attention, and to keep that attention and to secure a meeting. This is why I suggest to founders that, sure, take an initial pass at writing your pitch deck, but understand that part of your job as a founder, and this is a difficult balance to strike, is to get really in the weeds when you're building and running your business. But also to be able to zoom out when you're talking about your business to outsiders, especially in a pitch deck. Learning the skill can be done by iteration and practice, but realistically it's about getting good feedback from outsiders who aren't themselves too close to your business. Asking your COO or your head of marketing to critique your pitch deck slides, may not be the best use of your time because they're just as close to your business as you are. asking a trusted advisor might work, provided they aren't too close. asking a buddy who might work in consulting or might be a professor, something like that, who can read critically but who doesn't necessarily have the same, investment, no fundraising pun intended, into the ins and outs, into the minutiae of your business as you do, may be a better bet for understanding the narrative stakes, of the fundraise. And so it's by seeking these, external opinions about what your business problems are and how you're effectively conveying them in a fundraising narrative is, I think, the best way to go. And it helps founders see what that critical distance looks like in the form of feedback. And if founders are paying attention to what this feedback looks like, then they're understanding how they can adopt these critically distant positions on their own. And they become better, not just at putting together a pitch deck, of course, but about seeing their business problems, their immediate business problems, from different levels of abstraction, different altitudes, and that can only stand founders in good stead, not just in the course of a fundraise, but also when it comes to articulating the stakes of the business, to any amount of stakeholders.
