1. Boring. You’re reading the bullet points to me, half the time with your back turned to me. It’s like watching a speech with the teleprompter showing. Look at me, put a picture onto the screen to add emphasis, and talk to me.
2. Bull. You’re quoting crazy numbers out of context. You’re assuming I won’t connect dots, or that you’re the only one in the room with background. You’re thinking that just asserting some huge opportunity makes it true.
3. “If we can get half a percent of this market, we’re a $50 million company.” That line went out in the 1970s. Count your numbers from bottom up, not from the top down.
4. Too rehearsed. Talk to investors like you’re talking about your own business, like you could talk all day and all night if you have to, with the only problem being how to summarize for them. Don’t let it sound like a salesperson’s script. Don’t memorize, talk.
5. Half truths. In a room with 10 or 20 investors listening, every half truth increases the odds that you’ve stepped on a topic one of them knows very well. And a single half truth, discovered by somebody in the group who knows the whole truth, is taken as the tip of an iceberg. If you’re wrong on that one thing, aren’t you wrong on everything.
6. Where’s the beef? Don’t tell me about your team or your technology or your huge market until you’ve told me a story about how somebody needs what you’re going to build. One of my fellow bloggers on this site, Martin Zwilling, explained this problem very well recently in Investors fund solutions rather than technology, on Examiner.com.
7. All pitch, no plan. I hate it when the pitch is all there is, rather than a summary of a plan. I want to see that you’ve connected the dots in the background, so that you know the unit economics, the cash flow traps, the lead times, the selling cycles, and the head count, in detail. Not that I don’t expect you to change it or tweak it, when I ask a detailed question or somebody makes a suggestion that might be interesting. But a pitch is supposed to summarize a plan, not substitute for planning.
8. All that passion and persistence stuff. Please don’t sell me on how committed you are. Businesses work because of the value they offer, the solutions they offer, the disruption of existing markets; I assume you’re all passionate and committed. Don’t tell me that like it is supposed to make a difference.
9. Dumb profits. Don’t tell me you’re going to make 50 percent profits on sales. Nobody ever really does that. It means only that you’d don’t understand the business.
10. Big secrets. If you can’t talk about it, don’t. Stop talking, apologize, and leave.

All opinions expressed are those of the author,  and do not necessarily represent those of Gust.