On reviewing 400 pre-seed decks in a year
A year of reading early decks at the rate of more than one a day — what I started skipping, what I started rereading, and what I learned about my own pattern matching.
I read four hundred pre-seed decks last year. I wrote checks into four of them. The math is humbling and it is also, I think, about right.
What I started skipping
The eight-slide narrative arc. The competitive matrix where every box but yours is empty. The team slide that lists pedigree before product. The TAM number sourced from the same consulting deck everyone else is sourcing from.
None of this is a sign of a bad founder. It is a sign of a founder who has been told what a deck is supposed to look like.
What I started rereading
The footnotes. The specific number from a specific customer. The screenshot of a Slack message from a user who does not yet know they are the protagonist of slide six. The one paragraph where the prose changes register because the founder is, suddenly and briefly, just talking.
What I learned about myself
I am pattern-matching on prose, not on numbers. I want to know whether the founder can think out loud in a way that moves me. If they can, the rest tends to follow. If they cannot, the rest rarely does.
This is not a thesis. It is a reading habit. But it is the most honest description I can give of what I am actually doing when I read your deck.