I Know Everybody Told You to Send Your Fund-Raising Decks as a Link. Here’s Why You Should Just Send the Deck⁠↗

Whenever you write your deck and send it out I think you should actually think to yourself, “my competitors are probably going to read this one day and this will be forwarded widely” and if your response isn’t “so what!” or “that would be awesome” then I think you’re doing something wrong anyways.

In a perfect world your deck shows you in such a positive light that the person in the VC firm who receives it forwards it to the rest of his or her team. Your deck should be so good that a VC asks you for permission to show it to his or her portfolio companies. Your deck should be so compelling that the partner at the VC firm you’re talking to reads it multiple times because they keep going back to the thought, “I should really spend more time with this company” and they can’t get it out of their head.

If your deck is something I should open 3–4 times as I’m contemplating an investment, why add any consumption friction to the reader?. No amount of tracking when she read your deck is going to truly help you get inside her head so those benefits are oversold.

In short, there is nothing in your deck that should give you pause or make you feel like you can’t just send the damn file to somebody.