What investors actually read: a conversation with Dave Mitchell

Jo van Vuuren //

You’ve read a lot of decks and written a few. What do investors read first?

Dave Mitchell //

They read a deck the way you’d read a CV: quickly, looking for a reason to stop. What stops them is a gap. The deck says one business, the model says another, and the plan for the money says a third. If all three say the same thing, you’re in a conversation. Most founders never get that far, and it has nothing to do with the product.

Jo van Vuuren //

Where does that gap come from? Nobody sets out to describe three different businesses.

Dave Mitchell //

Sequence. The deck gets written for a meeting next Tuesday. The model gets built by whoever likes spreadsheets. The plan for the money never really gets written at all — it’s “hire and grow”. Nobody sits above all three. That’s the work before any raise: make one business show up in every document an investor touches.

Jo van Vuuren //

What do founders most often get wrong about what the money is for?

Dave Mitchell //

They ask investors to fund the past. An investor is backing the company to grow — that’s the deal. If part of your raise is going on tidying up what already happened, buying somebody out, clearing old commitments, settling the structure, expect pushback. Growth money is for growth. Sort the structure first, then ask.

Jo van Vuuren //

How much traction is enough at pre-seed?

Dave Mitchell //

Less than founders think, if it’s real. A handful of named customers, revenue that repeats, a small team running lean — that’s investable, because the story writes itself: look what they did with almost nothing. A room full of projections is worth less than one quarter of actuals. And the leaner you’ve done it, the better the story reads.

Jo van Vuuren //

How seriously should a founder take a verbal commitment?

Dave Mitchell //

As encouragement. Not as money. I’ve had verbal commitments that closed and verbal commitments that evaporated, and you can’t tell which is which on the day they’re made. Until it’s signed and the cash has landed, you keep running the process. Two businesses I took to investment-ready didn’t complete their rounds. That’s the honest end of this work, and it’s why nobody serious will promise you a close.

Jo van Vuuren //

You always ask about the questions after the pitch. Why?

Dave Mitchell //

Because they tell you everything. The questions after the deck are commercial: who buys, why, what it costs to reach them, what happens to the money. If the founder answers those in specifics, the meeting went well, whatever the body language said. If the answers go vague, the deck did its job and the business didn’t. That second case is fixable — but not in the room.

Jo van Vuuren //

Angels or funds, for a first round?

Dave Mitchell //

Different animals, different clocks. Angels back the person and the story, and they move at the speed of your relationship with them — which means your network is the real constraint. The early-stage funds are quicker than people expect; the good ones can take a deal to committee inside a fortnight. But they want the company clean before they look. That’s most founders’ real problem. It isn’t that nobody wants to invest. It’s that the business isn’t ready to be invested in.

Jo van Vuuren //

What should a founder do six months before they need the money?

Dave Mitchell //

Get the paperwork boring. Cap table clean, contracts findable, numbers reconciled, one narrative across everything. Then the raise is about the business instead of the tidying up. The founders who struggle are doing both at once: negotiating structure with one hand, pitching growth with the other. And start earlier than feels necessary. It’s always timing with these things.