skimming

VCs do it all the time

Author

Jorian Hoover
March 17, 2026

Hey friends, it’s Jorian—welcome to Into the Ring. I’m a startup fundraising coach and have worked with 50+ founders who’ve raised over $190M.

For today’s newsletter, I’ll discuss “don’t be someone you’re not,” review the latest fundraising rounds Tier 1 VCs led last week, share my recommended VC newsletters/podcasts, and give a deep dive on how to deal with VCs skimming what you send them.

Last, thank you for being part of this Into the Ring tribe of 1.8K+ startup founders and operators/investors from OpenAI, Anthropic, a16z, Lightspeed, etc. If you think someone else might like this newsletter, they can sign up here.

Now onto today’s newsletter!

In today’s issue:

  1. Jorian’s 1min take: modality winners in AI

  2. What funding rounds did Tier 1 VCs lead last week (Mar 7-13, 2026)

  3. This week’s recommended VC essays & podcast episodes

  4. Today’s deep dive on how to fundraise like a pro: VCs like to skim

1. Jorian’s 1min take: don’t be someone you’re not

I often suggest to founders that they increase their confidence when fundraising and speaking with VCs. Maybe even be a little bit cocky.

But what I never recommend is fully acting like someone else when talking to VCs.

I’ve met many founders who are genuinely nice who were told they need to act like a-holes in their meetings with VCs. Supposedly to play hard to get or extract as much value as possible. They heard this from a founder in SF or by watching Silicon Valley.

But that’s no fun way to do business. I often ask these founders 1) how does it feel like to act like that? And 2) do you plan on keeping up the shtick even after a VC invests?

Because it’s going to be awkward if a VC invests in you and then you completely change personalities post-term sheet…

…and risk coming across as inauthentic.

3. This week’s recommended VC essays & podcast episodes

  • Newsletter: “The Org Chart Math Behind AI-Native Speed” (link) by Tomasz Tunguz, Partner at Theory Ventures. Tomasz Tunguz gives his view on why AI companies can have dramatically leaner org structures than traditional SaaS companies.

  • Newsletter: “Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps: March 2026” (link) by Olivia Moore, Partner at a16z. Every 6 months, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) releases their top 100 gen AI consumer apps and shares accompanying insights. Always worth a read to see which new apps are breaking through and which ones are lagging.

  • Newsletter: “Clouded Judgement 3.13.26 - In Defense of Model Lab Profitability” (link) by Jamin Ball, Partner at Altimeter Capital. Jamin Ball argues against the popular thesis that the AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini) will have poor margins over time. He believes margins will improve dramatically, training costs are like CAC, retention will be high, etc.

  • Newsletter: “Beyond the billable hour - How AI is reshaping margins and models at law firms” (link) by Aayush Sharma, Senior Associate at SignalFire. Sharma talks through the evolution of the billable hour and how some legal fees are transitioning towards more of a flat rate structure. Will be very interesting to see how this plays out, given the whole legal space is built on the billable hour.

4. Today's Deep Dive on How to Fundraise Like a Pro: VCs like to skim

Let me tell you about a fundraising trap I see founders fall into again, and again, and again.

And that trap is not realizing the primary reading mode of VCs: skimming

This problem becomes most obvious in the “landing a VC meeting” stage. The stage where a founder has sent some combination of an email / pitch deck / memo, often via a connector, to a VC in hopes of scoring a meeting.

Many founders come to me with intricately worded emails, pitch decks, and memos. Afterall, the startups these founders are building are their babies— and they're nuanced at that. Founders are afraid to simplify how they message their startup because they worry VCs will miss some of the detail.

But what founders are really missing is that 95% of the time, VCs are just skimming whatever you or the connector sends them.

Want proof?

I typically recommend founders share their pitch decks via docsend, not only for access/security reasons but also because they can get analytics on how much time VCs are spending on the deck as a whole and each slide specifically. Founders routinely expect that VCs will spend between 3 to 10 minutes looking through their slide decks.

So they're amazed when the average visit length is 30-45 seconds, with a few outliers in the 2-3 minute range.

When you think about it, even 2-3 minutes going through a 10+ page deck is essentially skimming. If that's skimming, then the 30-45 second average is what I call super-skimming.

Why are VCs skimming?

Much of my advice to founders comes down to stepping into the shoes of a VC. Once you understand what the day-in-the-life of a VC looks like, you’ll quickly realize why VCs are skimming, or even super skimming, your pre-meeting materials.

VCs get thousands of inbound from startups seeking funding each year. Sure, a high percentage of this is cold outreach, but even intro requests via trusted sources can easily tally into the high hundreds or thousands.

And VCs do more than just take meetings with startups seeking investment. They also need to sit on boards of portfolio companies, win existing deals in the pipeline, raise money from LPs, and more.

So unfortunately VCs don’t have time to meet with every inbound startup nor can they thoroughly review all the materials they’ve been sent.

And so they end up skimming whatever you’ve sent them.

Design your materials for the "Uber test"

What you need to do is design your materials for what I call the “Uber test”. Imagine a VC sitting in the back of an Uber, between coffees in SF. They’ve received your blurb and pitch deck via a friend and need to decide if they want to take the meeting.

They quickly (20 seconds spent reading the email, 40 seconds scanning through the deck) review what’s been sent and they feel confused on what’s going on. The uber is about to arrive to their next café and they quickly scribble together a note to their friend “thanks - not for me so I’ll pass.”

Obviously there will be many times when even having perfect materials won’t score you a VC meeting.

But in many other cases, having initial materials that pass the uber test can be enough to land you the VC meeting.

From a design perspective, this means your email, pitch deck, and memo (if you have one) need to land well when a VC is scanning them. In the email, this can mean strong topic sentences, and good use of bolding and bulleting. For the pitch deck this can mean making the title of each slide the key takeaway, and ensuring each slide’s visuals are designed so that one’s eyes move naturally, and not all over the place.

It’s not just about before the VC meeting

Even after the VC meeting, once you’re moving ahead with the process, it’s important that your materials continue to be easily scannable. If your demo is hard to follow, then that’s a problem. If your data room is impossible to navigate, that just makes it harder for the VC.

All of these steps can add friction to the process and make it less likely you receive a term sheet.

Yes, it’s a pain that VCs skim your materials, both before and after you meet with them.

But it’s the name of the game, so better to play the game than be played.

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I’ve helped 50+ founders run high-quality fundraises and raise over $190M. Check out jorianhoover.com to read founder testimonials and learn more about my approach.