What investors really think about the TAM slide in your pitch deck

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

If anentrepreneur can negotiate deadly traps and slay the doubt monsters that aredevil tech investors, they will be rewarded with a golden SAFE note at the end of their quest.

The pitch can lead to poor decisions like overlong slide decks, failing to prepare investors before a meeting, and exaggerating the size of the total addressable market in which they hope to compete.

According to Aydin Senkut, the founder and managing partner of Felicis, it is almost certain that you will be wrong with the product. Either it will be large or small.

The numbers given in a pitch don't affect whether or not Kara is going to invest. It is more important to be able to articulate how big something is and to show that you have a thought process around it.

The metrics of the SAM andSOM aren't meant to be carved in stone. They are simple planning tools that help founders show investors their company's upside potential.

She said that if we take the meeting, we all think there is something interesting enough to be a venture-bankable business. The way the founder thinks about company creation is more important than the business or its future. That is more important at the early stages.

Since they already have a general understanding of the sectors in which founders hope to compete, the numbers are not determinative.