3 pitch deck red flags that are counterintuitive

3 pitch deck red flags that are counterintuitive from a pre-seed investor. I see a lot of pitch decks right now and as a pre-seed investor, this is something I do a lot. And there's a few things standing out to me this morning that founders might think is a good thing, but actually is a red flag, so I just wanted to call them out. The first is if you have too many people on your team slide. This is a red flag to investors for a few different reasons. First, it might indicate your burn rate is high and as an early stage startup, you really have to reserve capital for validating that your customer has the problem you think they do and that you can reach them. So that makes me worry you won't be as scrappy and capital efficient as at least me as an investor would want you to be. The second is it dilutes the unique advantage that you have as a team. I'm more interested in why you and your co-founders have an advantage over any other team executing this idea than learning about your advisors or some of the other team members. So I focus on quality over quantity. The second red flag I'm seeing that might sound like a good thing is a really large market size, but it's all top-down. Really what I want to see is bottoms-up. How many customers do you potentially have and what's your average revenue per customer? What's your revenue opportunity? So that's a huge red flag to me because it means that you don't truly understand your customer or your market. The third thing that might seem like a good thing but holds me back is if you have a great overall deck, 12 to 14 slides, you're covering all the areas, but there's no validation included in the deck. There's no mention of experiments you've run, customers you've worked with, and you're just raising off the idea without having done or expressing any customer discovery or work you've done yourself. Typically, founders start companies while they're still employed and they can at least do customer discovery interviews, you know, get some pre-orders, drive insights, create some mock-ups of the product and get feedback from potential customers. And I'm looking for a founder to invest some time and hustle into the company before asking, you know, an investor to put time and money into their company. So think about how you express through your deck the work you've done to date, and that shouldn't be just thinking about what product you'll build. It should be thinking about who your customer is, validating they have the problem and showing that you can reach them. If you're working on your deck, check out my videos. They're on my profile, walking you through each slide in an early stage pitch deck, all the things I wish I knew as a founder now that I invest full-time.