Is it time for founders to ditch the pitch deck?

Last month (actually it was August—I’ve been busy), my desperate plea to founders to please stop sending AI slop decks went viral. I wrote it because my Monday-morning pitch deck review routine had gone from exciting to neutral to mildly annoying to downright soul-sucking in the course of a year. Decks used to be like a bag of Bertie Botts Every-Flavored Beans—some blah, some gross, some absolutely delightful. Today, it’s all vanilla and completely indistinguishable. I heard from a lot of you in response. Fellow investors adamantly agreed. Most VCs can tell when a deck is AI-generated, and are equally annoyed at the sameness. The deeper issue isn’t about the deck itself—everyone I heard from has the same allergic reaction when it’s clear that AI didn’t just design it—it did the thinking, too. Investors weren’t alone in this—anyone who has to sift through inbound pitches for a living is in the same camp. In particular, journalists and editors in my network report that their inboxes have exploded with PR pitch slop, at an exponentially higher volume than VCs. As a VC and contributor, my inbox and I concur. The one group I didn’t hear much from this time are founders . . . at least n…

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