Red Flags I’ve Learned to Spot in Early-Stage Pitches
After spending time on both the founder and investor side — across financial VC, corporate VC, and early-stage advisory — I’ve seen a lot of startup pitches. Some are polished, others are scrappy, but a few stand out for the wrong reasons.
Here are some of the red flags I’ve learned to pay attention to. Not all of them are deal-breakers on their own, but when I see more than one pop up in the same conversation, I start asking a lot more questions.
1. “We Don’t Have Any Competition”
This is probably the most common red flag — and one of the easiest to avoid. If you claim there’s no competition, it usually means you’re not looking hard enough or you're framing the problem too narrowly.
Every customer is solving the problem somehow today. Even if it’s manual, clunky, or inefficient — that’s your competition. Ignoring that tells me you haven’t spent enough time understanding the customer’s world.
2. Pitching a Solution in Search of a Problem
A lot of deep tech and scientific founders fall into this trap. The technology might be cool, novel, even defensible — but when asked who it’s for, what it replaces, or why now, the answers get vague.
If the use case shifts every time someone challenges the idea, it’s not a business — it’s a hammer looking for a nail.
3. Over-Indexed on TAM, Under-Indexed on Wedge
“We’re targeting a $100 billion market” doesn’t mean much without a clear initial entry point. If the team can’t articulate who the early adopters are, what budget the solution taps into, or what problem they solve first, the big TAM just becomes noise.
Markets are entered, not boiled.
4. No Technical or Operational Edge on the Team
At the early stage, you’re investing in people as much as anything else. If the founding team doesn’t have the right technical depth, market context, or operational muscle — or at least the self-awareness to fill those gaps — it’s hard to build conviction.
I’m not expecting the perfect team on Day 1, but I do want to know: Why are you the right team to build this?
5. Fuzzy Plan, Shiny Deck
A beautiful pitch deck can mask a lack of real thinking. If the roadmap is full of buzzwords, but the budget is a flat monthly burn rate and the go-to-market strategy is “we’ll hire someone,” I worry.
Give me something scrappy and thought-through over something sleek and superficial any day.
6. No Clear Next Milestone
If a founder can’t clearly define what success looks like in the next 6–12 months, or what the next round of funding is supposed to unlock, it’s a sign they’re not thinking in experiments or real traction.
At the early stage, the whole game is risk reduction. You don’t need to have all the answers, but you should know which questions you’re trying to answer next.
Investors don’t want to invest in a bridge to nowhere, help show them where you’re going and how and when you’re going to get there.
7. Defensive or Dismissive When Challenged
Every startup pitch should be a conversation. If a founder gets cagey, defensive, or flat-out dismissive when pushed on basic assumptions, that’s a problem.
I’d much rather hear, “Good point — we’re still thinking through that,” than be spun into a corner with overconfident nonsense.
Final Thought
None of these red flags automatically mean “don’t invest.” Some of the best founders I’ve met were still figuring things out — but were honest, curious, and willing to learn fast.
What matters is how a team thinks — about the problem, the market, their risks, and their own blind spots.
If they’re willing to be real about those things, there’s usually something to build on.
