Business
DocSend Mid-Year 2023 Pitch Deck Interest Analysis Indicates Growing Gap in Founder and Investor Activity
Founders seeking capital see limited opportunities as investors take their time – and their summer vacations SAN FRANCISCO, July 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ --
About this update from Dropbox, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"Founders seeking capital see limited opportunities as investors take their time – and their summer vacations\nSAN FRANCISCO, July 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- DocSend, a secure document sharing platform and Dropbox (NASDAQ: DBX) company, released a new data analysis of its Pitch Deck Interest (PDI) metrics showing lukewarm investor engagement is signaling continued diligence and selectivity in fund deployment. Despite this ongoing pullback, startup founders continued to seek out funding in Q2 2023. The amount of pitch decks sent out by founders in Q2 increased 4.0% year-over-year (YoY), but investors' engagement with those decks decreased both quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), and YoY by roughly the same amount. The widening gap punctuates the struggles founders face this year in their fundraising.\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \nEarly Summer Slowdown Keeps Investors in Control\nSeasonality, which refers to the typical slowdown in activity during the summer months and other holiday time frames, may already be impacting the early-stage fundraising marketplace.\nQoQ analysis shows that founder activity, which serves as a gauge for fundraising market supply, increased 4.0%, while investor activity, a gauge for market demand, decreased 4.6%. Similarly, YoY analysis saw a 4.0% increase in pitch decks sent out, with a 5.7% decrease in pitch decks reviewed by investors.\nYear-to-date (YTD) data shows that this trend has been a constant in the first half of 2023. Founder activity decreased less than 1% in 2023, but investor activity decreased by nearly 12%, implying that investors are on the advantageous side of the deal-making table, and have been all year. YTD analysis is still impacted by 2021's end-of-year momentum, accounting for founders' strong start in 2022.\nAdditionally, while investors are reviewing fewer pitch decks from founders, they are spending less time reviewing them when they do. In Q2, investor time spent reviewing pitch decks decreased 4% QoQ, while decreasing 7.7% YoY and 7.7% YTD. These are all-time lows for investor time spent on deck, showing that founders have less time than ever to grab potential investors' attention.\n\"All three of DocSend's historical metrics point clearly to an investor-friendly marketplace at this time,\" said Justin Izzo, data and trends analyst at Dropbox DocSend. \"Due to continued macro concerns as w...