VC bias in viewing pitch decks can affect fundraising success
docsend.com
docsend.com
I had to dig five links deep before I got an answer. DocSend is a service that allows founding teams to send pitch decks to investors. DocSend invited founding teams to participate in this research.[0] It's worth noting that they don't seem like they asked for consent from the VCs whose browsing behavior they observed for this study.
In DocSend's privacy policy[1], the VCs are Viewers, whereas the founding team is the User. DocSend apparently allows Users to give consent on behalf of the Viewers:
>If you are a Viewer who views Content you receive from a User via the Service, we automatically collect information about your interaction with such Content and our Service. The information we collect includes: Whether or not a you have viewed or are viewing Content; Date and time you viewed the Content; Number of times and length of time Content was viewed; Which portions of the Content were viewed; and Your IP address and location.
They also generally want the ability to keep it and show it to others, even if you don't want them to. Classic display of power.
The worst part of docsend for me is I will get an email saying "check out our new thing" and then I click on it sometime later to look at it again and it's already expired. Or I remember, "hey that deck about xxxyyy, other investor zzz should talk to them" and I can't search for it because there was zero content in the email.
Super interesting position they take.
Starting with an obvious - people gravitate towards people like themselves - so that means we need more women represented in VC first at the Principal and IC level.
Even if you were able to mask who the founding team is from the initial deck and pitch (similar to how hiring has started), a face to face has to happen at some point. This will keep the same problem perpetuating until that particular group is represented as a decision maker.
The phrase "no taxation without representation" seems apt.