Intro

Translating a groundbreaking vision for an innovative business into only a few slides feels like a herculean task. For founders it may even feel like communicating their insights to VC’s is equally, if not more, challenging than actually having done the work to conceive the insight in the first place. In large part, this can be explained by two closely related concepts from the behavioral sciences, namely ‘the curse of knowledge’ and ‘insider bias’. These cognitive blindspots muddle communications, making the sharing of complex ideas with - customers, partners, and investors in particular- surprisingly difficult. In many cases, dampening a venture's prospects to get the funding it needs.

The challenge

Imagine trying to explain the color blue to someone who has never seen it before. This is basically what the curse of knowledge is. As a bias it refers to the difficulty that individuals who are deeply specialized and/or knowledgeable have in imagining what it’s like for someone who does not have the same knowledge that they do. The curse of knowledge leads to communication gaps, where the person trying to communicate assumes that their audience possesses a similar level of understanding to them. This leads them to communicate in a manner that is far too complex and/or assumes too much prior knowledge on behalf of their target audience.

On the other hand, insider bias typically occurs with groups of individuals, who share specialized knowledge, experiences, or interests– much like many founding teams do. It leads members of the group to either over- or underestimate the extent to which their knowledge or beliefs are shared by people outside their group, manifesting in communication that either vastly over- or under-communicates.

Over-communicating as a result of insider bias happens when the person trying to communicate includes too many details, believing that every minor detail is necessary to ensure the audience is able to grasp what they are trying to say. It leads to the intended audience experiencing information overload, and therefore losing their ability to grasp the intended message of the communicator.

Similarly to the curse of knowledge, insider bias can also lead to a communication gap that assumes too much prior knowledge of the audience, resulting in communication that is far too complex for the audience. In which case it typically leads to confusion or plain disinterest as the intended audience disengages.

Common pitfalls

In the context of pitch decks specifically, the result of both biases tends to most frequently result in the dreaded ‘slide bloat’, where a founder's eagerness to cover all their bases results in an overabundance of slides, each laden with a plethora of technical minutiae, numbers, and excessive detail. The end result being that the crucial element most critical to a deck’s persuasive power, its narrative arc, gets buried under a heap of details that obscure the true potential of what the deck is trying to show.

Think about it from the average VC’s perspective whose inbox is practically inundated with endless pitches, many falling prey to the same biases, and their daunting task of sifting through endless decks swamped with insider jargon and excessive data points. What truly tends to grab a VC’s attention, and what actually stands out amidst all the noise they experience, is a pitch that relies on clear, concise, and compelling narratives. The key message of a blue-chip pitch deck shines through without the need for a magnifying glass, by precisely articulating why this venture, why now, and why this team.

Conversely, there's the equally thorny territory of where founders assume a level of expertise among their audience that simply isn't there. This is the mirror image of slide bloat—thought of as the 'desert of detail,' where founders, in an effort to avoid overburdening VC’s strip away too much context, leaving VC’s thirsting for substance, with the core narrative and data that validate the business opportunity conspicuously absent.

Striking pitch-perfect balance

Achieving the right balance in a pitch deck is a delicate task, that’s more art than science. Founders must weave a tapestry that's rich enough to be engaging, yet not so dense as to be overwhelming. This requires a keen understanding of the VC's perspective, which includes enough detail to satisfy curiosity’s, coupled with the clarity to make complex concepts accessible. The magic lies in illuminating the vision, not in leaving investors to navigate the dark or, conversely, by blinding them with the glare of excessive exposition.

A practical approach to mitigating these biases is for founders to regularly road-test their pitch content with novices and outsiders in order to collect genuine feedback. Founders can spot when insider bias and/or the curse of knowledge flare up by observing when their explanations and/or decks receive blank stares or confused nods. That’s their cue to step back and assess whether they need to simplify or integrate additional context.

In figuring out what the right approach is for calibrating a pitch, it’s crucial to remember that the narrative arc is a pitch’s ultimate persuasive power, and therefore analogies are one of the most effective tools that founders have for translating intricate concepts into relatable narratives. They act as a conduit, ensuring that an idea’s core message is clearly conveyed across cognitive divides, without diluting the idea’s potency.

Moreover, it’s important to remember effective communication is rooted in empathy, and contrary to popular belief the majority of VC’s are in fact human. That means that the task of founders is to gauge the knowledge level of the VC’s they intend to pitch and meet them there. It’s the responsibility of founders to construct a narrative scaffold that supports the VC’s understanding and sculpt a story that will be equally intuitive to the VC as it is for them, as that is ultimately the key for ensuring that founder and VC are able to see the world with practically the same set of eyes.

Wrapping it up

One of the birthing insights that led to the inception of MetaDeck was that an effectively leveraged objective outside perspective is a key differentiator for getting a deck and its narrative arc to where it needs to be in order to consistently resonate with VC’s. MetaDeck’s services provide an objective eye that is an effective counterbalance to the inherent expertise of founding teams. Our team, with extensive experience in storytelling and communicating insights, can effectively pinpoint where a pitch aligns with common comprehension and where it diverges into the esoteric – that paired with our design, behavioral science, and narrative skills empowers us to reconfigure a pitch to more effectively resonate with VCs.

If you believe that your pitch could do with an objective outside perspective, to ensure it visually and narratively resonates with VCs, we’d love to hear from you at hello@metadeck.co, and see how we can help maximize the potential of your pitch deck, and ultimately your venture.