As usual great stuff coming from you. A few thoughts from my experience in brainstorming mode:

I have seen people succeed getting several hundred millions without any pitchdeck or company created.

Why ist that:

1. Experience: They have already several decades of industry experience accumulated. They have a team with whom they have worked together for a few years. It immediatelly derisks the asset showing a team of “we did it once, we for sure are hungry enough to do it again.”

2. Confidence: Since they come from a place of experience they know the needs, problems, and what solutions are easy to sell. When they tell their story, they believe it themselves.

These two points are where most people fail. When they don’t have mastered these two points, they shouldn’t call investors at all for a pitch session.

Not having a team is pitching an idea. ChatGPT can do that better these days. Find the team first.

Failing at 2 - if the team doesn’t believe their story will change the world, they will never convince other people. Every founder must be sold on the story and willing to give their own lives for the success, then it sells to investors.

Every founder who fails at these two points, will not succeed finding money, regardless of how well dressed they are, how polished the pitch deck is, or how many hours they trained their storytelling.

When I look at the videos of young Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel or Jeff Bezos, they all demonstrated these two points very clearly:

I did my homework and know idea xyz will work - i got the best team - we bring decades of experience to the table and have produced abc recently - this will work. There is 0 doubt here - Steve Jobs started every pitch with the same pattern.