Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Van Gaal: 'Why Now' slides give investors a shortcut to filter pitches

Jason Van Gaal · He exited for hundreds of millions—then invested in 20+ founders. Here's what he looks for. | Jas... · PMF Show · Feb 3, 2025 · at 24:00

Jason Van Gaal, angel investor and former founder of Root Data Center, explains his framework for screening startup pitch decks.

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“The slide allows investors to be mentally lazy, right? Cause you know, investors look at a lot of deals. Your company is very special to you, but to an investor, you're one of a hundred deals they've looked at that week. So investors are just seeing a lot of volume and they need ways to be mentally lazy and look at things quickly and be interested or not interested. So so the why now slide for us became very important because it allowed us to be kind of mentally lazy and it allowed us to say, okay, we assume that every idea that we're going to see has been thought of by someone else before. Your idea is not unique and special.”

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