Pre-traction, pitching investors: what the deck can't fake

James: You see hundreds of pre-traction decks. Most have the same hockey-stick on slide nine. Does anyone believe it?

Daniel: No. And the founders who lean on it lose me. Pre-traction, the chart is fiction and we both know it. What I'm actually underwriting is the founder's judgement — can they tell a real signal from a flattering one.

James: So how do you test for judgement in a 40-minute meeting?

Daniel: I ask about the experiment that failed. The good ones light up. They can tell me exactly what they believed, what they ran, what the data said, and how it changed their plan. The weak ones don't have a failed experiment — which means they haven't really tried anything yet.

James: Where does technical credibility come in? You're not an engineer.

Daniel: No, but I can tell within minutes whether there's someone in the room who could actually build the thing. When a founder brings a credible technical voice — a real CTO, even fractional — the whole round gets easier to underwrite. The build risk stops being a black box.

James: That's a lot of what I do, so I'm biased, but I see the same thing from the other side.

Daniel: It's not flattery, it's pricing. If I can't see who builds it, I price in that risk or I pass. A credible technical seat doesn't just answer questions — it tells me the founder knows what they don't know. And the best founders interview me back. They ask what would make me not do the next round. That's judgement too.