One thing not mentioned here that would be helpful to others: what did the VCs you met with actually care about in your deck vs. what you thought they would care about? My personal experience has been that first time founders tend to misjudge this.
For one we thought they'd care about TAM — most did, but the way the cared differed. In other words, some immediately required a firm answer to "How can this become a billion-dollar business," while others asked questions that seemed to pressure test our hypotheses and assumptions, but were more interested in quality of thought rather than our ability to see the future.
We thought they’d care about product mockups, but most didn’t. My assumption is that they knew it would all change drastically (they were right).
They did care a lot about how prior experiences would confer advantages, so we ended up leaning into that heavily the more we pitched.
