Pre-Money Studio
IndexRubric

Score your deck in ten questions.

Ten questions, three answers each, scored 0/2/3 for thirty points total. Below the scorecard: a worked weak-vs-strong example for every slide, and a four-step playbook for applying the rubric before you send. The result lives in your browser only — nothing is sent.

Before you start

How to apply this rubric.

The score isn't the point. The mechanic — forcing yourself to pick one of three honest answers per slide — is.

  1. Step 01

    Score it twice — once alone, once with a partner

    The honest score is the lower of the two. Most founders inflate by one band on the solo pass; a co-founder or operator catches the gap. If you can't agree on a score, default to the lower one and rewrite that slide.

  2. Step 02

    Take the lowest-scoring slide first

    Don't rewrite the whole deck. Take the single weakest slide and make it a 3. Then re-score. The slide that was second-weakest is often a 3 already once the worst one drags less weight.

  3. Step 03

    Don't optimize for 30

    A 27 with a sharp 'why now' beats a 30 with hedged-perfect bullets on every slide. Aim for honest 3s on the four slides DocSend says investors actually read: title, problem, traction, team.

  4. Step 04

    Re-score every two weeks during the raise

    Decks decay. Numbers update, the round moves, the wedge gets sharper. A 28 in week one is a 24 in week six if you don't re-score. Put it on a calendar.

Score · 0 of 10 answered
0/ 30
  1. Q01 · Title

    Can a partner read your title slide for five seconds and repeat back: company, category, round, contact?

  2. Q02 · Problem

    Is the problem stated in the customer's own words, with two or three quantified bullets?

  3. Q03 · Why now

    Does your 'why now' cite a specific shift in the last 18–36 months?

  4. Q04 · Wedge

    Is your wedge narrow enough that you can name the first customer profile by job title?

  5. Q05 · How it works

    Does a product slide show a real workflow — input, action, output — with screen fragments?

  6. Q06 · Traction

    Do you show one chart with time on the x-axis and a key metric on the y-axis, with retention next to it?

  7. Q07 · Market

    Is your TAM bottom-up, with the arithmetic visible (accounts × ACV)?

  8. Q08 · Competition

    Does your competition slide include the status quo (spreadsheets / do-nothing) and a row where you honestly lose?

  9. Q09 · Team

    Does your team slide answer 'why this team, specifically, wins this race' with one concrete prior outcome per founder?

  10. Q10 · The ask

    Is your ask amount, instrument, runway, and milestone-anchored?

Verdict

Answer all ten questions to see your verdict, the band you fall in, and the single weakest slide on your deck.

Worked examples

Weak vs. strong, slide by slide.

One pair per question. Anonymized from real seed and Series A decks I've torn down over the last 18 months. Same company in each pair — only the words and the order changed.

  1. Q01 · Title
    Jump to question →
    Weak · 0 points

    "Lattice — Reimagining the future of work. Confidential — Do Not Distribute."

    Strong · 3 points

    "Lattice. HRIS for distributed engineering teams. Raising $2.5M Seed on a SAFE @ $20M post. jane@lattice.co · Mar 2026."

    WhyThe strong version is repeatable verbatim by an associate at 11pm. The weak version forces the partner to guess the category, the round, and how to reach you.
  2. Q02 · Problem
    Jump to question →
    Weak · 0 points

    "Data is siloed. Workflows are broken. Knowledge work is inefficient."

    Strong · 3 points

    "Mid-market FP&A teams miss the close date once a quarter. The cost is ~$80k/quarter in restated reports, audited at three Series B SaaS customers we interviewed."

    WhyQuantified, in the customer's language, with a verifiable anchor. A partner can challenge it on its own terms instead of dismissing it as background noise.
  3. Q03 · Why now
    Jump to question →
    Weak · 0 points

    "AI changed everything. Post-COVID, every company is digital-first."

    Strong · 3 points

    "Section 1033 final rule (Oct 2024) makes consumer-permissioned data portability mandatory by Apr 2026. We're the only API-first vendor pre-built against the spec."

    WhyA dated, citable shift creates urgency. A megatrend creates background noise — partners discount it because the same sentence was true two years ago.
  4. Q04 · Wedge
    Jump to question →
    Weak · 0 points

    "An AI-native operating system for modern HR, finance, and operations teams."

    Strong · 3 points

    "Onboarding for distributed engineering teams of 50–250 at Series B SaaS companies. Replaces a 14-step Notion runbook with one workflow."

    WhyA wedge you can name by job title and segment is testable in 18 months. A platform pitch isn't — it's a roadmap, not a company.
  5. Q05 · How it works
    Jump to question →
    Weak · 0 points

    "A glossy Figma render of a dashboard with no labels, no flow, no customer."

    Strong · 3 points

    "Three frames: trigger event → in-app capture → resolved action. Replaces a 45-min weekly meeting + a shared spreadsheet. Anchor: Acme Co., Q1 2026 pilot, n=1,420 events."

    WhyPartners fund jobs done, not interfaces. The strong version answers what the customer's day looks like; the weak version asks the partner to imagine it.
  6. Q06 · Traction
    Jump to question →
    Weak · 0 points

    "12,400 signups. 3.2M page views. Growing fast. Logos of 'interested' customers."

    Strong · 3 points

    "ARR $50k → $338k over 11 months (single line, time on x-axis). NRR 142% · logo retention 96% · CAC payback 7.1 months."

    WhySlope plus retention reads as a real business. Vanity counts read as a leaky bucket the founder is hoping no one inspects.
  7. Q07 · Market
    Jump to question →
    Weak · 0 points

    "The global HR software market is $400B and growing 12% YoY (Gartner, 2024)."

    Strong · 3 points

    "142,000 US dental practices [ADA, 2024] × $4,800 ACV = $682M TAM. SAM (urban/suburban, PLG-reachable): $410M. 5-year SOM at 12% penetration: $49M."

    WhyBottom-up math survives diligence. Top-down TAM gets dismissed in 30 seconds because every category you adjacency-pile into the number adds noise, not signal.
  8. Q08 · Competition
    Jump to question →
    Weak · 0 points

    "A 2x2 with 'Speed' on one axis, 'AI-native' on the other, and you alone in the top right."

    Strong · 3 points

    "Feature ledger naming Spreadsheets, Incumbent A, Incumbent B and us. We win on time-to-value and price; we lose on SOC 2 (in progress, Q3) and on multi-region."

    WhyAdmitting where you lose is the highest-trust move on the deck. The empty-quadrant 2x2 is a meme partners forward to each other.
  9. Q09 · Team
    Jump to question →
    Weak · 0 points

    "Three headshots. Logos underneath: Stanford, Google, McKinsey. 'Deep domain expertise.'"

    Strong · 3 points

    "Jane (CEO): built and sold Clearbit's enrichment API ($1.5B exit, 2024). Ravi (CTO): scaled Stripe's ledger to $200B/yr in payment volume. We've shipped two products together at Stripe."

    WhySchool logos and 'expertise' are credentials; the partnership room funds outcomes. One specific shipped thing per founder is worth more than four logos.
  10. Q10 · The ask
    Jump to question →
    Weak · 0 points

    "Raising a seed round to accelerate growth and hire key roles."

    Strong · 3 points

    "$3.0M on a SAFE @ $20M post. 22 months runway. Buys: $1.5M ARR (from $240k), 8 hires (4 eng, 2 GTM, 1 design, 1 ops), SOC 2 Type II. Series A target: Q3 2027 at $1.5M ARR, 130% NRR."

    WhyA milestone-anchored ask gives the partner a memo to write. A vague ask makes them write the memo for you — they won't.
The 24-hour pre-send drill

Don't send the deck the day you finish it.

Every deck I've ever shipped on the same day it was finished came back with regrets. Run this drill in the 24 hours before you send. It takes about three hours total and adds a band to your score.

  1. T-24hScore it solo, honestly. Note the lowest two slides.
  2. T-20hRewrite the lowest slide. Don't touch anything else.
  3. T-16hRead the deck out loud, top to bottom, with a stopwatch. Target: under 4 minutes. Cut to fit.
  4. T-12hSend it to one trusted operator (not an investor) for a 30-minute review. Ask: 'What's the one slide that loses the room?'
  5. T-6hRe-score with their input. Rewrite anything still scoring 0. Stop touching the rest.
  6. T-2hFinal pass: file name (Company_Round_Date.pdf), file size (<8MB), cover email (two sentences and a link), and the date in the footer. Send.

Want a second pair of eyes on the slides this rubric flagged? Send the deck.

Or read the long-form guide to building a deck first. The rubric is the lite version; the guide is the playbook.

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