We’re encouraged to think of pitch meetings as a trial by fire: If an entrepreneur can negotiate deadly traps and slay the doubt monsters that bedevil tech investors, they’ll be rewarded with a golden SAFE note at the end of their quest.
Particularly for first-timers, the pitch has become an existential drama, which can lead to poor decisions like overlong slide decks, failing to prepare investors before a meeting, and fatally, exaggerating the size of the total addressable market (TAM) in which they hope to compete.
“With TAM, it is almost guaranteed you’re going to be wrong,” Aydin Senkut, the founder and managing partner of Felicis Ventures, said at TechCrunch Disrupt. “It’s eith …
