I don’t know how many pitch decks I’ve seen, but I’m noticing a common trend. Founders never forget the problem, the solution, the market size, the team, etc. However, the traction slide seems to frequently and conveniently be ignored.
On the one hand, I can understand why founders with little traction may be tempted to try and divert the potential investor’s attention elsewhere. It’s not fun to create a slide that doesn’t have a nice up-and-to-the-right hockey stick. On the other hand, it’s also easy to think that you don’t need traction for your first raise and that you can simply raise off of an idea.
However, not having a traction slide creates a barrier to the potential investor understanding one of the most important questions they are asking themselves as they look through the deck — How far along is this startup? If you do not answer that question, the potential investor will assume you have no traction because you wouldn’t leave a traction slide out if you did have traction. Worse yet, the potential investor will start to question your credibility and may begin to wonder if there are other aspects of the business you aren’t being clear about.
This is a shame because when most investors open a pitch deck, they start with a sense of excitement that this could be their next big investment. However, when founders don’t share important information, the excitement fades as they start to question the startup and lose trust about how far along the startup actually is.
