The Startup Fundraising Playbook

About Our Research 

DocSend’s fundraising research, the DocSend Startup Index, provides insights into how startups raise capital at various stages in their lifecycle. We study how founders craft their pitch decks, seek meetings, and pitch investors in order to uncover fundraising trends and evaluate changing investor behaviors. 

Our data-driven research demystifies the startup fundraising process and answers many questions founders have about what goes into a venture-backed raise. 

Our Approach to Research 

We combine survey data on elements like demographic trends and investor outreach strategies with proprietary data from DocSend’s platform that reveals how pitch decks are structured and consumed. We also use qualitative data from industry experts that highlights lived experiences behind the numbers.

Contribute to Our Research

Our research is possible because of the survey responses and pitch decks submitted by startup founders. To share your fundraising experiences, process, and results, take our startup fundraising survey. All survey data is aggregated–individual responses are kept strictly confidential.

Take our founder survey

Take our investor survey

Pre-Seed Startup Fundraising: All You Need To Know

Pre-Seed Fundraising Trends 

Between 2021 and 2022, we found that investors spent less time reviewing pitch decks than ever before. We also identified four new trends that have emerged alongside a more investor-friendly fundraising marketplace in 2022.

VCs now spending less time on pre-seed decks 

Compared to 2021, investors have spent much less time scrutinizing pre-seed pitch decks in 2022. They’ve also become quicker to get to “no” with decks that don’t resonate.   

When we compare first and subsequent visits to pitch decks, our data shows another sharp divergence between 2021 and 2022. Investors in 2022 are spending more time on follow-up visits for decks that don’t ultimately receive funding.

Read all pre-seed fundraising trends

Investor-friendly market reveals four new trends

Between 2021 and 2022, four trends emerged in VC scrutiny of pitch decks. First, in 2022 VCs spent 52% less time on the product sections of successful decks. Second, they spent 42% less time on the business model section. These two trends mean that founders have less time than ever to make these all-important sections stand out. At the same time, the brief company purpose section was the third-most scrutinized section in 2022–this section was squarely in the middle of the pack in 2020 and 2021. Lastly, traction was a key factor differentiating unsuccessful decks: VCs spent 41% more time on this section in 2022 compared to 2021 for decks that didn’t receive funding.

Read all pre-seed fundraising trends

Pre-seed pitch deck trends: Compared to 2021, investors in 2022 spent 52% less time on the product section and 42% less time on the business model section. The company purpose section had the third-longest viewing time. Click To Tweet

Access to pre-seed capital remains global

In 2021-22, the Northeastern United States had a plurality of companies in our dataset, with the Western United States hot on its heels. However, there is a higher percentage of pre-seed companies located outside the US than ever before. This geographic distribution suggests that easier access to capital from outside the traditional Silicon Valley hub is a post-pandemic trend that’s here to stay.

Read all pre-seed fundraising trends

Pre-Seed Pitch Deck Analysis

The order of sections within decks was broadly similar for successful and unsuccessful companies. Where both groups had a certain section, that section was roughly in the same place. However, successful companies in our dataset tended to have their business model and fundraising goals sections at the end of the deck, whereas unsuccessful companies put them at the beginning and middle, respectively.

Seed Startup Fundraising: All You Need To Know

Seed Fundraising Trends

In 2020-21, two key factors emerged as “make or break” factors of seed fundraising pitches. Highly engaged investors look for robust business models and compelling traction in the seed stage companies they ultimately fund.

Monetization plans and market traction are key differentiators

The focus on monetization plans has become heightened among seed stage companies. Investors require thorough-yet-realistic business models in pitch decks, and they spent 94% more time scrutinizing these sections among decks that got funding.

Seed startups must also succinctly demonstrate their market traction. VCs will give extra scrutiny to companies whose traction results are limited or unconvincing. In fact, investors spent 78% more time on the market traction sections of decks that didn’t receive funding.

Read all seed fundraising trends

Seed fundraising trend: Investors spent 94% more time on the business model sections of decks in @DocSend’s data set that ultimately received funding. Click To Tweet

A fully-launched product is becoming the norm for seed startups

Product readiness has become essential at the seed stage. Across all the decks in our data set, the product section had the second-longest viewing time on average. But companies need more than just a slick product deck section: they should have their product as close to launch as possible before even attempting a fundraise. A majority (58%) of the companies in our data set had already launched their product at the time of fundraising. This signals that the GA launch of a product is becoming the norm, a step companies must take to even be considered “fundable.”

Read all seed fundraising trends

Contacting more investors doesn’t yield better results 

For your seed round, contacting a healthy number of investors can yield more meetings. However, diminishing returns kick in after about 100 investor contacts, and many companies in our survey secured meetings from less expansive investor outreach strategies. Further, our data shows no clear trend between the number of investors contacted and the amount of funding raised. Persistence doesn’t necessarily pay off: seed founders should focus on contacting investors who 1) fund companies in their field and 2) write checks in the amount they’re looking for.

Read all seed fundraising trends

Seed Pitch Deck Analysis

The order of sections in successful and unsuccessful decks was similar: where both groups had a certain section, that section was in roughly the same place. With the exception of a small minority of companies that included a table of contents, almost all decks put their nucleus of Company Purpose, Problem, Solution, and Market Size sections up front. This similarity suggests that what’s likely to catch investors’ attention in a pitch deck is becoming uniform: these four sections are essential just to get your foot in the door with VCs.

Series A Startup Fundraising: All You Need To Know

Series A Fundraising Trends

Succeeding in Series A fundraise calls for a more forward-looking approach. The rounds are much bigger and the meeting acceptance rate is much higher. Investors want to see scalability and positioning for the future.

Successful Series A decks focus on the future

Series A round pitch decks are all about building long-term confidence with investors. At this stage, companies need to show a solid track record of fiscal responsibility as well as future-oriented metrics like customer retention strategies and market share growth. Since decks at this stage should look forwards and backwards, they tend to be longer: the decks in our survey averaged 25 pages. However, since Series A investors are so specialized and know exactly what they’re looking for, the time they spend on decks tends to be lower than for earlier-stage companies.

Read all Series A fundraising trends

Traction needs to be repeatable and varied

One of the reasons Series A fundraising decks are longer is because companies need robust traction sections. Earlier-stage companies might show only one type of traction, whereas Series A companies need to show multiple forms of traction–such as awards or profit/loss metrics–to indicate to VCs the strength of the product/market fit. Further, companies need to show that these types of traction are repeatable over the long term.

Read all Series A fundraising trends

Choose your lead investor carefully

Nearly all (88%) of the companies that successfully raised had previous investors participate in their Series A round. But how do companies choose who leads the round? Only 8% of companies reported choosing a lead based on a brand name; by contrast, 30% chose their lead because they had industry-specific experience, and 23% because their lead offered the best terms. These figures show that the name on the check matters less than the type of deal being made or the sector expertise and connections a lead investor can offer.

Read all Series A fundraising trends

Series A Pitch Deck Analysis

Investors at the Series A round tend to spend more time on three key sections. The product and business model sections are crucial at this stage, since Series A companies need to show solid monetization plans for products that are more mature than at earlier stages. Relatedly, the business model section needs to show scalability over time. Compared to the Seed and Pre-Seed rounds, investors at this stage focus less on the purpose, competition, and “why now?” slides because companies that have reached the highly competitive Series A round of funding tend to have already positioned themselves clearly in the marketplace.

Read all Series A fundraising trends

Series A pitch deck trend: Investors at the Series A round tend to spend more time on three key sections: product, business model, and solution vs. purpose, why now, and competition in seed decks. Click To Tweet

Gender & Race Bias in Startup Fundraising

Absolute gains, relative disparities

VC interest in funding startups skyrocketed in 2021, but a rising tide has not lifted all boats equally. On the one hand, our data showed that all early-stage (pre-seed and seed) teams raised more thanks to record-setting amounts of available capital. On the other hand, disparities remain for all-female teams and teams with minority members.* For example, all-female teams raised 25% less than all-male teams on average.

Some underrepresented founders saw much more VC engagement early on in the fundraising process, but that initial interest didn’t translate into funding commitments. All-female teams with minority members averaged 57% more meetings than their peers while raising less than any other demographic.

Read more about fundraising bias

Pitch deck scrutiny and gender

Investors spent the most time overall scrutinizing the team sections for all-female decks, averaging 130% more time on this section than for all-male teams and 157% more time than for mixed-gender teams. For all-male teams, the team slide had one of the lowest viewing times.

By contrast, the disparity went the other way when it came to the product section. VCs spent 105% more time scrutinizing the product sections of all-male decks than all-female decks (and 78% more time than mixed-gender product sections). For all-female teams, the product section was one of the least-scrutinized.

VCs spent about the same amount of time scrutinizing the business models of all-male and mixed-gender teams. However, investors averaged 43% more time on this section for all-female teams. The relative importance of the team and business model sections for all-female teams suggests that investors were especially concerned about whether these teams had the right members to monetize a product.

Read more about fundraising bias

Pitch deck scrutiny and race

When we break down deck scrutiny by racial demographics, several sections stand out in particular. Investors spent 20% more time on the product sections of decks by teams with minority member(s) and 67% more time on the market size sections for these teams. By contrast, investors spent nearly 50% more time scrutinizing the business model sections of all-white teams.

The competition section shows the largest discrepancy between all-white and diverse teams. Investors spent 78% more time on this section for teams with minority member(s). These discrepancies indicate that for diverse teams, VCs focused on whether a company’s product-market fit stood out from other players in that company’s sector. This focus may have been more critical, since diverse teams in our dataset raised less than teams without minority member(s).

Read more about fundraising bias

Pitch Deck Interest Metrics

Part of DocSend’s fundraising research comes from survey respondents who report on their recent raises. However, another part of our data comes directly from the DocSend platform: we track how pitch decks are being shared and viewed on DocSend in order to gauge activity in the fundraising marketplace.

On a weekly basis, we analyze three Pitch Deck Interest metrics

• Founder links created: Number of pitch deck links founders send out
• Investor deck interactions: How actively VCs are on those decks
• Investor time spent: Average time investors spend reading decks

To learn more about our Pitch Deck Interest metrics and follow our regular analyses of fundraising activity, check out our weekly fundraising trends tracker.