5 terms to avoid in a pitch deck to angels

Receiving a startup pitch is always interesting. At some level, investors have the opportunity to learn something new. While getting creative is important to pitch the idea, founders some times run out of words and resort to jargon to balance the deficit.

Jargon is used by and between experts in a particular field to ensure that complex terms are replaced with their abbreviated equivalents. Using them outside their intended context mostly back-fires.

Here's a list of 05 terms that preferably shouldn't be used at all or with abundant caution while pitching to investors.

01. Disruption: In real life, changing habits for consumers or enterprises is super hard. That's because everyone wants change, but no one wants to change. Some things (like the basic design of a shoe) don't change at all, no matter what you do (here's looking at my friends that wear Vibrams to the gym).

And it's not like the incumbents are just going to roll over and die. They will put up a fight at all levels. Business, regulation and sometimes even litigation. Fun fact: It took 30+ years for locomotives to improve their speed by 10mph.

Disruption starts slowly, then picks up speed. Also, you don't know you have disrupted markets until the disruption is complete. Most successful startups take 7-10 years for adoption and domination.

02. AI/ML: In at least two startup pitches, I have found that most of the intelligence around the idea is artificial. AI/ML is the new GMV. Founders love to throw this around for impact, as an add on to create rainbows and sparkles. I'm no expert in the field (most of my extremely limited knowledge comes from reading The Master Algorithm and Superintelligence, both of which I would highly recommend).

If you are relying on being an AI/ML company, you better have exceptional tech chops in that department, preferably at the founder level. Additionally, large data inputs so that your models can become superlatively trained over time.

Competence is like martial arts. Be the expert and show it at depth when required. You can't fake it till you make it with skills.

03. Paradigm shift: This always triggers my MBA alert antennas. I must admit that this is falling out of favor now, but like disruption's ugly cousin, does land up in the pitch deck once in a while. Long story short - don't use TLAs without qualifying them. TLA = three letter acronym.

Remember that customers and markets decide adoption and success. They are the one's that finally decide whether your idea is a. Awesome and; b. Worth paying for.

Whatever you do, don't bore, confuse or threaten an investor. It's a guaranteed formula to switch them off your idea/pitch/revolution.

04. TAM: The other cousins (SAM and SOM) are a little better. Total addressable markets are a slightly dicey game since they are a top-down approach to market sizing.

Most (not all) startup founders will do a Google search to figure out the size of the market. Some will quote a report summary from a big-name consulting firm to bolster their numbers with the stamp of external authority.

Top-down approaches ignore some fundamental issues. Execution, defensible data and non-monopolistic market shares. My personal belief is that founders should present their own data (however small) since it has all three factors baked in.

Anything that is defined, is limited in the process. Better to seed the fact of good execution in the investor's minds and let them figure out how big you can be. They can't argue with themselves.

05. But (insert startup name here) did it: Comparisons are odious. This is because they pit budget airline travelling entrepreneurs to yacht owning multi-billionaire founders. If you must compare Steve jobs to your self, remember that he was a tinkerer, then an entrepreneur and then a visionary. He also failed multiple times, got thrown out of his own company etc.

The actual story of a startup journey is messy, jagged and fraught with challenges. Unfortunately, we see success through the lens of media (who reduce it to the interesting bits) or through the entrepreneur (who control the messaging in line with their current image).

To paraphrase Steve Jobs, put your ding in the universe. If there was a playbook for success, all of us would be billionaires and very few people would fail.

As I write this piece, I am aware of supreme irony. People look at lists for the same reason that they follow gurus or read self-help books. The idea that happiness or success can be achieved through a formula is too seductive for us to let go of.

This list could have been 06 or 04 terms long. You could have got funded in-spite of using these terms or not funded by avoiding them. Uncertainty is what makes life interesting If we choose to be comfortable with it.

Feedback is a gift. Is this piece too long, short, arbitrary, sassy or irrelevant? Please comment below. Will help me improve. Have a great weekend.