I have a habit I am not proud of. When a founder starts presenting, I quietly start a timer in my head. By the time it hits sixty seconds, I usually already know if I am leaning in or leaning out. Not because I decided fast. Because the founder told me everything in that first minute, whether they meant to or not. Most decks lose the room before slide three. And it is almost never the market size, the team, or the product that kills them. It is the opening. The first minute i

At Henson Venture Partners, we sit through a lot of pitches. And we keep seeing the same mistake, over and over again. Founders walk in prepared. The deck is polished, the transitions are smooth, and the lines sound rehearsed. You can tell they put in the work. And yet nothing lands. Every pitch starts to blur together. "We are redefining the future of X." "We are democratizing access to Y." "We are revolutionizing the way Z works." It all sounds big and ambitious, but none o