
VC bias in viewing pitch decks can affect fundraising success - nickfrost
https://www.docsend.com/blog/how-vc-bias-in-viewing-pitch-decks-can-affect-fundraising-success/
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mtlynch
Where did this data come from?

I had to dig five links deep before I got an answer. DocSend is a service that
allows founding teams to send pitch decks to investors. DocSend invited
founding teams to participate in this research.[0] It's worth noting that they
don't seem like they asked for consent from the VCs whose browsing behavior
they observed for this study.

In DocSend's privacy policy[1], the VCs are Viewers, whereas the founding team
is the User. DocSend apparently allows Users to give consent on behalf of the
Viewers:

> _If you are a Viewer who views Content you receive from a User via the
> Service, we automatically collect information about your interaction with
> such Content and our Service. The information we collect includes: Whether
> or not a you have viewed or are viewing Content; Date and time you viewed
> the Content; Number of times and length of time Content was viewed; Which
> portions of the Content were viewed; and Your IP address and location._

[0] [https://docsend.com/view/my4w3gf](https://docsend.com/view/my4w3gf)

[1] [https://www.docsend.com/privacy-policy/](https://www.docsend.com/privacy-
policy/)

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ponker
Not a VC but if I was I would never click a DocSend link. And VCs hold a lot
of power — sure they are all chasing deal flow but if they just responded “I
don’t click pitch links, send me a PDF” they would get their PDF 99 times out
of 100.

~~~
xyzzy_plugh
I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted, but this is a pretty popular
perspective in general, let alone VC. Many high-profile folks don't care about
your links or secure sites or what have you, they just want the PDF or PPT
file.

They also generally want the ability to keep it and show it to others, even if
you don't want them to. Classic display of power.

~~~
joshu
I'm an investor and I don't love clicking on the docsend links, but I will. I
really dislike clicking on linktracked links, especially from a cold pitch.

The worst part of docsend for me is I will get an email saying "check out our
new thing" and then I click on it sometime later to look at it again and it's
already expired. Or I remember, "hey that deck about xxxyyy, other investor
zzz should talk to them" and I can't search for it because there was zero
content in the email.

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yodon
Great hard data. Hopefully at least some VC's will look internally at the way
they talk about "pattern matching" and recognize it for what it is, a
selection bias tuned for young white male founders.

~~~
cheez
like the rest of the world

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irjustin
I love this. Definitely the gap needs to close.

Starting with an obvious - people gravitate towards people like themselves -
so that means we need more women represented in VC first at the Principal and
IC level.

Even if you were able to mask who the founding team is from the initial deck
and pitch (similar to how hiring has started), a face to face has to happen at
some point. This will keep the same problem perpetuating until that particular
group is represented as a decision maker.

The phrase "no taxation without representation" seems apt.

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ex3ndr
Why this could not be different because of gender itself, not because of bias?
For example, men prefer to talk about solutions and may be more focused on
enterprise and women are more product oriented? Isn't you have to use pretty
much the same keynotes to make any conclusions?

~~~
jtsiskin
Yes this doesn’t make any sense as a “study”, just an ad for docsend. The
Harvard study they referenced [https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/investors-prefer-
entrepreneurial...](https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/investors-prefer-
entrepreneurial-ventures-pitched-attractive-men) is much better

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jtsiskin
The linked article I found more convincing:
[https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/investors-prefer-
entrepreneurial...](https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/investors-prefer-
entrepreneurial-ventures-pitched-attractive-men) The original article someone
could argue “this just shows men make better pitch decks” which is clearly not
the case

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edko
Is there any study that shows the effect on the environment caused by the
current slowdown on polluting industries and travel?

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harness_up
No shit.

