I read every deck that reaches me, and most of the ones I turn down are turned down for avoidable reasons. This is the whole checklist — the slides, the questions I'm asking behind each one, and the books that taught me to ask them. Use it before you send anything to anyone, not just to me.
Analyse the market, the technology and the competitive landscape properly. Show it to friends and ask for honest feedback. Revise it several times. Put source references in small print so nobody argues about facts instead of substance. Then send it to one or two friendly investors for a critique — and only then to a wider group.
External numbers with no source. If your market size, cost curve or emissions figure has no citation, I stop reading the argument and start auditing the arithmetic — which is a worse conversation for you than the one you wanted to have.
Adapted from Bplans, Slidebean and Ash Maurya's Lean Canvas, then bent towards hardware.
Nine of my own, then the ones I borrowed. Peter Thiel's seven questions from Zero to One still sort deep tech companies better than anything else I've found, so I use them and add four.
Do I believe the premises, the conclusions, the sales forecast and the valuation? Where does the external data come from?
Will it work outside the lab and scale quickly? What electricity or storage price does it assume?
Could a cheaper or better approach bypass it within a few years?
How much CO₂ can realistically be prevented or captured in five to ten years?
Is there IP that stops a well-funded competitor from copying you? Link to the patents.
Track record, knowledge of the technology and of the market. Do you have the right team?
Is now the right moment for this particular business?
Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
Can you deliver the product, not just build it?
Will your position still be defensible in ten or twenty years?
Have you seen an opportunity that others haven't?
Is a 10× return in five to ten years plausible? It needn't be an exit — dividends count.
From The Lean Startup. Answer these before you build, and again before you raise:
1. Do customers recognise they have the problem you are solving? 2. If a solution existed, would they buy it? 3. Would they buy it from you? 4. Can you build it at an acceptable cost?
Free online book from Planet A Ventures, Norrsken VC and Speedinvest, built on founder and investor interviews. The most directly useful thing on this list if you are building physical technology.
How to talk to customers and find out whether your idea is any good when everyone is being polite. Short, and it will change how you run your next ten meetings.
Uri Levine, who built Waze, on why founders defend the wrong thing.
Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. The step-by-step version of customer development.
Mike Maples Jr and Peter Ziebelman on why a small number of startups actually change the future. My notes on it are in the link.
Free, no registration needed for the video lectures.
White paper by Ivana Sersic Vollenbroek and Jurgen van Eck of the Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij. Deep tech teams consistently underrate this.
Winning by Design. Ignore the SaaS framing — the structured sales process transfers to hardware.
Toby Coppel of Mosaic, via Slush.
Jeroen Bertrams. In Dutch.
Check the fit criteria first — cheque size, stage, sectors and the list of things I don't fund. Then send it.