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The parts of a raise that get decks a polite pass.

Ten "great team, bit early for us" replies rarely mean the market is wrong. They usually mean the deck's order, the metric it leads with, or the arithmetic on the ask lost the room in the first minute. These guides walk through each of those, using the same rubric that builds the paid report — with worked examples and the exact bands, so you can check the logic yourself.

Narrative

The five narrative arcs, and how to tell which one your raise fits

A funded deck is one of a handful of story arcs, not a fixed slide list. Here's each arc, the thesis a partner underwrites under it, and the signals that pick it.

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Slide by slide

What an investor actually checks on each of your 11 slides

The single question every slide must answer, the diligence lens behind it, and the failure that kills the slide — from title to the ask.

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Metrics

Which metrics to lead with, by stage — and the bar each clears

Leading with the wrong number invites the wrong question. The lead/support/omit table by stage and model, with the "clears vs. strong" bands.

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Diagnosis

Why decks get polite passes (and what the "too early" really means)

Nine reasons a strong company still gets a soft no — mapped to the exact slide, metric, or arithmetic gap that caused each one.

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The ask

Is my raise sized right? The arithmetic a partner runs first

Round-size band, implied dilution, revenue multiple, runway-to-next-bar — the four checks that happen before your deck is opened, with the math.

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The ask

How much should I raise at seed? Working the dilution math

A worked example: pick a raise, price it at the stage median post-money, and see the dilution and runway it implies — with the honest caveats.

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Market

Bottom-up market sizing: the TAM math investors rebuild

Partners discount top-down "1% of a $40B market" numbers. Here's the buyers × price × share formula they respect, worked end to end.

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Vertical AI

Vertical-AI gross margin: why the bar is lower, and the path-up story

Inference cost puts applied-AI margins ~20 points below software-grade. The bars by stage, and how to present COGS so it doesn't read as a red flag.

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Want this run against your own raise?

The ~70-page report picks your arc, re-sequences your slides, grades your metrics against the stage bar, and runs the arithmetic on your ask — in 48 hours, flat $490.

Request the report — $490