Top 5 take-aways from DocSend on Pre-Seed pitch decks in 2023

DocSend recently released their 2023 report on Pre-Seed rounds and it is full of nuggets for founders.

Why should I care about DocSend?

For some reason, one day everyone in the VC/startup world decided we were going to all use DocSend for sharing pitch decks and data rooms. To me this is not an obvious example of a winner-takes-all market, and there are certainly other companies with these capabilities, but here we are. What this means for you, however, is that anyone who is serious about sharing their pitch deck with VC funds is doing so via DocSend. Thus DocSend is sitting on a gold mine of data about pitch decks, how VCs interact with them, and who gets funded. Let's get into it!

#1. Supply of startup pitch decks is up while investor demand has fallen

Interesting to see that not only are actual investments dropping, investors aren't even engaging as much with potential investments.

• Q2 2023 saw a 11.5% drop in investor engagement with decks vs. Q2 2022

• Meanwhile, founders sent out 16% more pitch decks in Q2 2023 vs. the prior year

#2. The order and number of slides in your deck matters

• Successful decks put their "Why now?" slide at the front of their decks, whereas unsuccessful ones buried theirs in the middle

• 70% of successful decks included a financials slide, whereas only 45% of unsuccessful founders did.

• The average deck length dropped by over 15% in 2023, from 19 pages to 15

• Successful founders tend to have shorter decks: 40% of successful pre-seed teams had decks shorter than average, whereas 65% of unsuccessful teams had decks longer than average.

#3. Deck review times continue to fall

• VCs spend an average of 2:12 looking at a deck, a 19% drop from last year.

• If the average deck is 15 slides long, that means they are spending less than 9 seconds per slide.

• Despite an overall drop in deck viewing times in 2023 compared to 2022, VCs have actually increased the amount of time spent on the business model, traction, and financials sections.

• The competition section had the biggest year-over-year drop in VC time spent; keep this slide brief and easy to digest.

#4. Companies that don't have an MVP out get funded less frequently.

This doesn't sound like rocket science, but keep in mind that these are Pre Seed decks we are talking about here. If you haven't gotten the Alpha version of your product out yet, you'll need to present robust market analyses and thorough monetization plans that clearly signal long-term potential.

#5. Founders are contacting more investors and getting fewer meetings...

...and it takes longer from the first meeting to get money in the bank

Not all is doom and gloom

While it might take longer and be a bit harder to raise pre-seed funding today than it was a year or two ago, knowing the data on how long your deck should be, what slides to included, and how many investors you need to contact will give you much more clarity on how to set yourself up for a successful pre-seed fundraise.