This is probably one of the most common mistakes first-time founders make when reaching out to investors, and an easy one to fix:
Should I attach my pitch deck when I email investors?
No! Do not attach your pitch deck when you email investors, esp. if it’s the first time you’re reach out to them. There are three reasons for this:
- You need to pique their interest, not give away the entire story. Sending your deck in an outreach email is giving away too much, too soon. Moreover, you aren’t there to present the deck and steer the narrative. Save the deck for your meeting with the investor; at this phase, you’re selling the sizzle and not the steak.
- VCs *will* give your deck to competing portfolio companies. Your deck likely contains trade secrets, go-to-market plans, and positioning you that you don’t want your competitors to see. Whether they have already invested in a competing startup or do so laters, VCs will keep the deck you send them and share it with founders they back. Although this practice is generally frowned upon, it’s still fairly common (even among larger, reputable firms); this is basically the whole reason Docsend exists. For example, Postmates founder Bastian Lehmann claims that the Doordash founders gained an edge by seeing an early deck he had shared with Matrix Partners (ultimately Postmates sold to Uber for $2.65B while Doordash passed a $100B market cap in 2025).
- Emails with attachments are more likely to end up in spam. All major email providers (Yahoo, Google, Outlook) have tightened their spam enforcement policies, which has translated to more and more legitimate messages winding up in people’s spam folders. One of the simplest spam detection rules in most systems is to reject emails with image or file attachments that are received from a sender who the recipient has not replied to before. This means sending plain text emails with no attachment is your best bet to ensure your message actually reaches a VC’s inbox.
So what should I attach to my investor emails?
If you plan to include an attachment with your email, send a one-page executive summary, company tearsheet / factsheet, or other teaser (ie. a 5-7 slide “non-confidential” excerpt of your deck) that doesn’t give the whole story or secret sauce away.
Some founders won’t attach anything to their email, and instead will include a (see our guide to writing cold emails to investors for more details) list of key highlights.
- Secured multi-year contract with [Notable company]
- [$##] ARR in [#] months, [##+] customers,
- [$##+] deals in the sales pipeline
- [##%] of the round committed, oversubscribed
Typically you want to save the deck for your initial meeting. To summarize, the typical fundraising cadence goes like this:
4. Fund GP will creator an internal investment memo and circulate the deck + memo with fund partners