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For what it's worth, many investors strongly dislike DocSend. It helps founders track views but adds friction. Here's a good recent post from Mark Suster on the

For what it's worth, many investors strongly dislike DocSend. It helps founders track views but adds friction. Here's a good recent post from Mark Suster on the subject: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/i-know-everybody-told-you-to-send-your-fund-raising-decks-as-a-link-d5b4409886af https://bothsidesofthetable.com/i-know-everybody-told-you-to...

mhb_eng 8y ago
Cannot agree more strongly with you here. Anything that makes it harder to read/reference/share these materials is a small but common irritant.
- Pyxl101 8y ago
  How is sharing a hyperlink more friction than copying and forwarding around an actual document? Personally, I'd always want to share and send a link rather than the document itself. When my employer set up an online document sharing/review/comment system, everyone eagerly adopted it because the alternatives (like SharePoint or emailed documents) are cumbersome. I think sharing a hyperlink to a web page is about as easy and low-friction as it gets. Anything else is higher friction and requires "downloading" and "opening" with special software on special platforms. I would be interested to understand the difference in these points of view. Are you perhaps referring to friction doing something else other than plainly viewing or sharing the document? I have not used DocSend.
  - joshu 8y ago
    The opener now has to think about whether the sender is tracking them and what information is shared.
aerosmile 8y ago
I really value Mark and love his writing, but this article seems a bit one-sided. He's essentially telling founders that if they are not publicly sharing their traction, acquisition channels, unit economics and market insights, that they are doing it wrong. Couple of reasons why I disagree: - You lose control of your messaging from the PR point of view. Perhaps you said in your deck you'll expand to XYZ by a certain date, and now that you're 6 months late and want to get some PR, why open up yourself to people putting a negative spin on your story? - You expose yourself to risk of getting copied by well-funded startups looking to pivot. Will you manage to win anyway? Perhaps. But if you could choose, do you really want expose yourself to all that risk? - Last but not least, here's an investor essentially confirming that investors cannot be trusted to keep your deck confidential. Just in case you ever wondered... For everyone who disagrees with these points, please share your deck in your comments :)
- joshu 8y ago
  These are dreadful reasons. The first is silly, for the second you shouldn't share that stuff with investors without having a conversation, and the third is a problem whatever the transmission system (unethical people aren't going to be stopped that easily). Especially since Docsend supposedly let you download PDFs if you log in. I rarely open docsend docs and never on cold pitches. Using other tracking links is an automatic fail. You already can imagine why. I do like having the deck in my inbox so that when the pitch changes I can see what they once did. Lots of founders will do multiple companies and abandon failures early, and I want to be able to see what they pitched me on six months ago. I don't think you necessarily need to put all of that stuff in the deck (and certainly not proprietary data) but you are effectively sending people a shortened URL for your stuff that will die in a few weeks.
  - aerosmile 8y ago
    > you shouldn't share that stuff with investors without having a conversation > I rarely open docsend docs and never on cold pitches Therein lies the conundrum: we are both right and wrong, depending on the context. Scenario A: you just completed a hackathon and have no connections or existing investors to help you reach other investors => in this case you should reduce the barrier of distribution in any way possible. Scenario B: you are running a seed funded startup and have enough traction to raise the A round => you will be getting warm introductions, and investors will be opening your links. Most founders fall somewhere in between those two scenarios, starting at the Scenario A at the beginning of their careers, and slowly making their way towards the Scenario B. The nice thing about using DocSend is that it will tell you exactly if you're ready for it => just look at the open rate of your links. > I do like having the deck in my inbox so that when the pitch changes I can see what they once did. Lots of founders will do multiple companies and abandon failures early, and I want to be able to see what they pitched me on six months ago. This is what I meant with one-sided. Nobody disputes the value of that information to the investor. From the founder's perspective, however, you get this set of options: 1. the slide deck you were pitching 1/2/3 years ago materialized exactly how you predicted => congratulations, you're in Scenario B, and investors will be reading your deck no matter how you present it to them. 2. your old slide deck was overly optimistic, and you either underperformed, pivoted, or abandoned your startup altogether. Do you really want everyone out there to have this dirt on you?

mhb_eng 8y ago

Cannot agree more strongly with you here. Anything that makes it harder to read/reference/share these materials is a small but common irritant.

Pyxl101 8y ago
How is sharing a hyperlink more friction than copying and forwarding around an actual document? Personally, I'd always want to share and send a link rather than the document itself. When my employer set up an online document sharing/review/comment system, everyone eagerly adopted it because the alternatives (like SharePoint or emailed documents) are cumbersome. I think sharing a hyperlink to a web page is about as easy and low-friction as it gets. Anything else is higher friction and requires "downloading" and "opening" with special software on special platforms. I would be interested to understand the difference in these points of view. Are you perhaps referring to friction doing something else other than plainly viewing or sharing the document? I have not used DocSend.
- joshu 8y ago
  The opener now has to think about whether the sender is tracking them and what information is shared.

aerosmile 8y ago

I really value Mark and love his writing, but this article seems a bit one-sided. He's essentially telling founders that if they are not publicly sharing their traction, acquisition channels, unit economics and market insights, that they are doing it wrong. Couple of reasons why I disagree: - You lose control of your messaging from the PR point of view. Perhaps you said in your deck you'll expand to XYZ by a certain date, and now that you're 6 months late and want to get some PR, why open up yourself to people putting a negative spin on your story? - You expose yourself to risk of getting copied by well-funded startups looking to pivot. Will you manage to win anyway? Perhaps. But if you could choose, do you really want expose yourself to all that risk? - Last but not least, here's an investor essentially confirming that investors cannot be trusted to keep your deck confidential. Just in case you ever wondered... For everyone who disagrees with these points, please share your deck in your comments :)

joshu 8y ago
These are dreadful reasons. The first is silly, for the second you shouldn't share that stuff with investors without having a conversation, and the third is a problem whatever the transmission system (unethical people aren't going to be stopped that easily). Especially since Docsend supposedly let you download PDFs if you log in. I rarely open docsend docs and never on cold pitches. Using other tracking links is an automatic fail. You already can imagine why. I do like having the deck in my inbox so that when the pitch changes I can see what they once did. Lots of founders will do multiple companies and abandon failures early, and I want to be able to see what they pitched me on six months ago. I don't think you necessarily need to put all of that stuff in the deck (and certainly not proprietary data) but you are effectively sending people a shortened URL for your stuff that will die in a few weeks.
- aerosmile 8y ago
  > you shouldn't share that stuff with investors without having a conversation > I rarely open docsend docs and never on cold pitches Therein lies the conundrum: we are both right and wrong, depending on the context. Scenario A: you just completed a hackathon and have no connections or existing investors to help you reach other investors => in this case you should reduce the barrier of distribution in any way possible. Scenario B: you are running a seed funded startup and have enough traction to raise the A round => you will be getting warm introductions, and investors will be opening your links. Most founders fall somewhere in between those two scenarios, starting at the Scenario A at the beginning of their careers, and slowly making their way towards the Scenario B. The nice thing about using DocSend is that it will tell you exactly if you're ready for it => just look at the open rate of your links. > I do like having the deck in my inbox so that when the pitch changes I can see what they once did. Lots of founders will do multiple companies and abandon failures early, and I want to be able to see what they pitched me on six months ago. This is what I meant with one-sided. Nobody disputes the value of that information to the investor. From the founder's perspective, however, you get this set of options: 1. the slide deck you were pitching 1/2/3 years ago materialized exactly how you predicted => congratulations, you're in Scenario B, and investors will be reading your deck no matter how you present it to them. 2. your old slide deck was overly optimistic, and you either underperformed, pivoted, or abandoned your startup altogether. Do you really want everyone out there to have this dirt on you?