The Two-Minute Test

The Two-Minute Test

Three separate sources have put numbers on the first minutes of a raise: an angel survey, a dataset of 24,541 pitch decks, and one fund’s first-call data. They measure different things, and I’ll keep them apart. Here’s what each says, two seed announcements from this past week, and what founders and first-time fund managers can do with the first minutes of a meeting.

This post covers how meetings run. It isn’t legal, tax, or investment advice.

Three Clocks, Kept Separate

Each of these sources measures something different, so I won’t combine them into a single number.

  • A live pitch: what angels say they do in the first two minutes of hearing a pitch (a survey).
  • A deck: how long investors spend reading a shared deck (one platform’s data).
  • A first call: how many minutes pass before the investor asks a real question (one fund’s recorded calls).

The Survey: The First Two Minutes of a Pitch

Angel Investment Network published its 2026 global angel survey on October 1 and updated it October 14. In it, 47% of angels say they reject between half and three-quarters of the pitches they see within the first two minutes. In the UK, the page reports 60%.

The fastest routes to a no, according to the survey:

  • An unclear problem: a founder who can’t explain the problem clearly (23%).
  • No demand evidence: no evidence that anyone wants the product (23%).
  • Evasive answers: evasive or defensive answers to questions (19%).

14% of angels name buzzwords and AI-washing as their top reason to reject a pitch on the spot, and 54% say they have rejected a deal as “AI-washed.”

The same survey says 67% of angels judge founders mainly on how they handle tough questions and pushback, and 62% say honesty about problems before they become fatal separates the founders who succeed. It also says 34% expect to make fewer investments in the next 12 months, against 25% who expect to make more, and 59% say valuations are still too high.

A caveat: this is a survey by a company that runs an angel investing platform. The sample size isn’t stated, and respondents chose to answer. I’d read it as one survey, not as a description of every angel.

The Deck: 77 Seconds

Papermark, a document-sharing company, published its Startup Fundraising Report on August 27, covering 24,541 decks and 358,672 investor views from 5,816 teams, January 2024 to June 2026. Tech Debrief covered it on October 29, which is why it’s circulating again now.

The headline numbers:

  • Median view: 77 seconds. The average view was 4.0 minutes.
  • Short views: 16% of views ended within 10 seconds.
  • The last slide: fewer than half of investors who open a deck reach it. The report says the first big drop comes between slide one and slide two.

The report also finds that decks from companies that went on to close a round collected 36 minutes of total reading time, against 18 minutes for the typical deck, and that decks opening with traction in the first three slides got 20% more views. Those are associations. More reading time may follow from interest a deck already had, and Papermark itself says “no full deck order has been measured against outcomes.”

One more caveat: the data covers only decks shared through Papermark’s links. The report’s own advice is that views under 30 seconds usually point to who you sent the deck to, not the deck itself. That’s vendor guidance, not a finding, but it’s a useful thing to check before you rewrite slides.

The First Call: Nine Minutes to the First Question

BADideas.fund, a pre-seed and seed fund for founders in Central and Eastern Europe, publishes data from its own first calls with founders, updated October 13. On a typical call, the investor asked the first real question about 9 minutes in. On a quarter of calls, it took 16 minutes or more.

How the founder opened made a difference:

  • Opened with their background: a median 12 minutes until the first investor question.
  • Opened with the product: a median 6 minutes.

On 13% of first calls, the founder never stated a number about the company’s own traction. And the share of founders opening with their background rose from 39% of first calls in 2025 to 58% so far in 2026.

This is one fund’s recorded calls, with no stated sample size. In-person meetings may run differently.

Two Announcements That Lead With a Number

Two seed rounds announced this past week opened the same way. I don’t know how either team pitched or who introduced them, and the figures below are the companies’ own.

  • Paradev (formerly Superset): an $11.5 million seed led by Union Square Ventures, announced October 26. Its three founders were previously CTOs at YC companies and built the first version at a hackathon in November 2025. The announcement leads with usage: “In less than a year, hundreds of thousands of developers in 180 countries and one in eight Fortune 500 companies have used Paradev.” USV’s note repeats it and calls the founders “close to the customer.” “Have used” means used, not paid.
  • Pixel Systems: a $3.1 million seed led by Unconventional Ventures at about $21 million pre-money, reported November 2 by ArcticStartup. The company detects AI-generated and manipulated images, documents, and receipts. Its CEO, Robel Efrem: “Generative AI has made it extremely cheap to fabricate evidence.” The company reports $100,000 in contracted recurring revenue within 21 days of commercial launch. Its 99.98% detection rate comes from internal tests and isn’t independently verified.

I’m not saying either round happened because of one number. What the two announcements share is the order: a one-line problem or product, then one proof point, before anything else.

What Founders Can Do Now

  1. Say the problem in a sentence. Then give one customer, pilot, or revenue figure in the first two minutes, rather than a paragraph about vision.
  2. Open with the product. Give your background one sentence, then say what you built and for whom.
  3. Treat the questions as the pitch. Write down the three hardest questions you expect and your plain answers, including what isn’t working yet.
  4. Check the list before the deck. If most views of your deck are very short, look at who you sent it to and how before you rewrite slides.
  5. Model, test, adjust. Track which openings lead to a second meeting, and change what you lead with.

What GPs Can Do Now

  1. Use your first minute. Tell founders who you invest in, at what stage and size, and what you’ll decide on. A founder who knows your frame can answer in it.
  2. Publish what you screen for. If your criteria are on a page or in a short note, founders can send better-fit pitches. BADideas.fund is one example of a fund that publishes its call data and advice.
  3. Make forwarding easy. Ask the people who send you founders for a two-line intro: what they build and one proof point. Send the same when you introduce a founder to someone else.

The Introduction and the First Two Minutes

BADideas.fund’s own advice says it plainly: “Even a warm introduction buys limited attention, and investors interrupt early; a pitch that works in about two minutes leaves room for the questions that decide.”

There’s no data in any of these sources on how often an introduction changes the outcome of an early-stage pitch, so I won’t claim it does. The work has two parts: find the right person to introduce you, and arrive ready to use the first minutes well.

ConnectLab.live is a relationship discovery platform. It doesn’t predict who will fund a company and gives no financial advice. It shows warm paths alongside your own connections, so you can see who in your network sits close to the investors who fit your raise.

Connection is the currency of the 21st Century.

If an investor gave you two minutes tomorrow, what would you say first?

Sources

About Ken McArthur

Ken McArthur is the founder of ConnectLab.live, an AI relationship-intelligence and warm-intro platform that helps founders who are raising find the funds that fit and the people who can introduce them, and helps fund managers connect with the founders they back. He was recently accepted into Harvard Business School Foundry. He also writes Raise Smarter, a daily newsletter on what's really moving in early-stage fundraising. Ken challenges us to realize we ALL have an impact, whether we want to or not, on thousands of people we touch in our day-to-day lives, and he shows that simple things make a HUGE difference. ConnectLab.live grew out of that belief. Connection is the currency of the 21st Century, and the right introduction can change a company's future. Long before ConnectLab, Ken was the popular host of live events that brought together top-level marketers, entrepreneurs, business owners, corporations and non-profit organizations to build multi-million dollar joint venture relationships. He has managed product launches ranked in the top 400 sites on the Internet and is regularly asked to speak at leading marketing events. He created AffiliateShowcase.com, a pioneering affiliate program search engine and directory. He also founded the MBS Internet Research Center, which conducted the world's largest survey ever attempted on creating and launching successful information products. Ken was the official mentor for Sterling Valentine as he took his launch from zero to over $100,000 in less than 8 days, a proof of concept documented in Info Product Blueprint. Today he puts that same skill for connecting people and launching ideas to work for founders and the investors who back them.

Leave a comment