Founders: PLEASE don't make more than one point on a slide in your deck. VCs are simple folk and we don't want to overwhelm them. (I kid! But not really!)
What happens when you get an email with five big paragraphs? Exactly. You immediately nope out. Ain't no one got time for War & Peace emails.
Same with a deck. If an investor has to spend more than a few seconds understanding the point of a slide, it feels overwhelming. Why should THEY do work to understand YOUR pitch?
How do you know you're making multiple points? Subheads, baby. I see it all the time.
If your bullet point has both a title and a description, you're making a new point. Collapse them into a single sentence and problem solved.
If you need to make each one of those points? That's cool. Break each point into its own slide.
I CAN'T SAY THIS LOUD ENOUGH: five slides that each take five seconds to understand is wayyyy better than one slide that takes 30 seconds to understand.
You want an investor to forward through your deck, slide after slide saying to themselves, "Yup," "Yup," "Interesting," "Yup," "Interesting," "OH WOW," all in a 30-second time span.
Complicated slides
* interrupt that flow and put unnecessary cognitive load on the reader.
* create concerns about the CEO's ability to communicate complexity
* try to seal the deal instead of sparking curiosity
Be kind to investors. They work hard. Give them something that goes down smooth and makes them ask for more.