Hundreds of pitch trainings, and the same mistakes turn up every season. Not similar ones: the same ones, so reliably that we can usually name two or three before a founder shares their screen. The full self-audit is public below, so hold your deck against it. The full treatment of each mistake, how it sounds in the room, why it kills the pitch, the fix and the one question to hold your deck against, is part of the free member layer: your email gets you in.
The whole academy, compressed to a self-audit
Every mistake on this list shows up in multiple coaching sessions a season, across genres, countries and funding stages. Experience does not immunize you: teams with prior funding blow their timing exactly as often as first-timers do. This is the capstone, so each line here is a whole chapter compressed to a single tell, with a link to the chapter that fixes it. If your deck dodges every one, it is already better than most decks we see in a season.
The self-audit
| # | The mistake | How it sounds in the room |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The wrong deck for the audience | Let me walk you through the gameplay, said to someone who wants a share of the company, not a copy of the game. |
| 2 | The problem opens a debate, not a nod | Slide one makes a claim half the room wants to argue with, so nobody nods first. |
| 3 | Slide titles that label instead of claim | Team. Market. Gameplay. Titles that name the topic and say nothing. |
| 4 | Going technical too early | The mechanism arrives before anyone knows why it matters, and the jargon makes the room feel slow. |
| 5 | The deck reads like a report | Six bullets, a default font, an entertainment product presented like an audit. |
| 6 | Talking your product down | It is a bit scrappy, some of it is AI, a couple of them flopped. You argue against yourself out loud. |
| 7 | The checkmark competition table | Green ticks for you, red crosses for everyone else, and the room stops believing. |
| 8 | The missing team, the unmitigated solo founder | A big vision with nobody credible attached, or one founder and no plan for the risk of one person. |
| 9 | The fuzzy ask, the valuation on the slide | Four numbers where one should be, and a valuation printed for the investor to anchor against. |
| 10 | Hockey-stick projections | A five-year chart climbing smoothly to the top right, which the investor quietly divides by ten. |
| 11 | Talking too fast, or reading the deck | Words at double speed, eyes on the slides, a pitch delivered to the screen instead of the room. |
| 12 | Distribution as an afterthought | A flywheel whose arrows never close on and that gets us more users. |
| 13 | Never asking for the second link | The investor passes, and you let them walk without asking who else they know. |
| 14 | The generic AI-template deck | A deck that looks like every other AI-generated deck, tells and all. |
Each mistake below is really a chapter of its own. Here is where the fix lives, so you can go straight to it. The full treatment of each, how it sounds, why it kills the pitch and the exact repair, waits behind the email gate further down.
- The wrong deck for the audience is a decision you make before the first slide: read the chair across from you in know your investor, then build the matching artifact in the deck, slide by slide.
- The problem that opens a debate instead of a nod: engineer the yes in the story.
- Slide titles that label instead of claim: the action-title method is in the story.
- Going technical too early: the mother and the fourteen-year-old test live in the story.
- A deck that reads like a report: scanning, contrast and the levels of a slide are in two decks and the visual hierarchy.
- Talking your product down: the mindset fix is in why you are always pitching.
- The checkmark competition table: swap it for a positioning map in positioning.
- The missing team and the unmitigated solo-founder risk: the bragging slide and the reframe are in the deck, slide by slide.
- The fuzzy ask and the valuation on the slide: one number in the deck, slide by slide, and why it already prices you in the numbers.
- Hockey-stick projections: what an investor believes instead is in the numbers.
- Talking too fast or reading the deck: pace, timing and presence are in delivery and nerves.
- Distribution as an afterthought: the moat and the flywheel that closes are in the AI era.
- Never asking for the second link: the referral mechanic is in finding and approaching investors.
- The generic AI-template deck: strip the tells with the AI era and two decks and the visual hierarchy.
This list is the fast diagnostic, and the chapters it points to are the cure. It also stands on ground the academy covers elsewhere: when to raise at all, which kind of money to chase in the money map, what an investor is really scoring while you talk, the thirty-second version of the whole pitch, running the round once the interest is real, and the legal side of the paperwork. Read on with a deck open, one mistake at a time.