Five minutes into your fundraising pitch, you need to take a beat and ask, "Are we on the same page?"
One of my clients walked me through their fundraising deck last week, and they did what 90% of founders do — raced through a dozen slides without ever verifying I actually understood the market opportunity.
At the five-minute mark, after you've explained the problem, the impact of that problem, your high-level solution and the market size, you pause. You look the investor in the eye and you ask, "Are we on the same page?"
There are only three real answers you'll get:
1. "I understand, but I don't care." (At least you know where you stand)
2. "No, not really. Help me understand X..." (Now you know what to clarify)
3. "Holy shit, that makes perfect sense. I can't believe nobody's solving this." (Bingo)
If an investor doesn't understand / believe in the giant opportunity, they won't ever care about your execution plans.
When you find out they don't understand, you've got twenty more minutes to dig into their questions. You might not get to the execution slides, but you could walk out with the investor saying, "Jesus Christ, I had no idea. That makes so much sense. Let's schedule a followup call."
Take a breath and make sure they see what you see.