What Investors Really Look For In 2025: Beyond The Deck And The Demo

The venture capital landscape has transformed dramatically in 2025. According to Crunchbase, global funding has ticked up “year over year” and has reached $109b this past quarter. Investors, however, are fundamentally changing what they prioritize when evaluating startups. The traditional pitch deck and polished demo are no longer enough as they forward to the potential lifespan and scalability a business can produce. 

This guide identifies what investors are looking for when it comes to pitching a business and beyond once it’s left the negotiation rooms — all from the experts themselves.

As the investment landscape evolves, Erika Aquino, a global angel investor with 26 startups across five countries, believes that building a community around the business idea will have it stand out to investors. 

“Investors now prioritize founder qualities and authentic connections to community and purpose over just product polish,” Erika said.

She highlights Gen Z founders who are purpose-driven, community-centered, digitally native, and demonstrate scrappiness — the kind of grit investors are eager to back.

As a result, this may also show investors that there is genuine interest in the product or service. 

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s co-founder and Greylock Partners partner, emphasizes that investors should focus on “long-term support for founders, rather than focusing solely on quick revenue targets.” His investment philosophy centers on network effects and platform thinking.

“Show, don’t tell,” Reid advises in his LinkedIn Series B pitch guidance. “The winning moment for an entrepreneur is when an investor concludes on their own volition that an investment thesis is worthwhile, rather than having the entrepreneur tell them what to conclude.”

While Reid’s advice is older, other investors have illustrated why it’s still relevant today. 

Lisa Suennen, who manages Manatt’s venture fund, focuses heavily on how founders communicate and handle pressure.

“I mostly spend time together getting them to tell stories,” she said in SVB’s investor interview series. 

According to Forbes, storytelling generates an emotion out of listeners, which can persuade them to take action. 

Nancy Pfund, managing partner at DBL Partners and early investor in Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity, warns that “sometimes founders drink their own Kool-Aid a little too much. For all the benefits of being laser-focused on their company, they risk not having a broad enough lens to view all of the dimensions that their startup will exist in,” according to SVB’s startup insights research.

Nancy’s investment approach centers on founders who understand context beyond their immediate product. She expects entrepreneurs to demonstrate fluency in political and regulatory changes, understand economic cycles beyond their control, articulate capital needs for meaningful milestones, and present risk-adjusted market views.

“I want to get answers as to why should I invest in this company over all the other opportunities I have,” Nancy said, emphasizing that VCs invest in people first, especially when substantial revenue or user data may not exist.

Lisa’sapproach reveals two questions that consistently stump founders: “Who is your real competition?” and “Who absolutely needs to have your product?” These seemingly simple questions often expose gaps in market understanding and customer validation.

Her advice also centers on presentation and mindset.

“They should just relax, figure out how to be, or at least act, confident,” she said. “Take a breath before speaking so they don’t interrupt, be open minded to concerns and criticisms and try to see it through the investor’s eyes, too.”

She looks for founders who are “confident but humble, get right to the 8-10 most important points and understand this is a sales process.” The key insight is recognizing that fundraising is fundamentally about selling your vision and yourself as the person to execute it.

Having successfully raised funding for his health software startup, Ben Plotzker, CEO of Patch, offers founder-side insights highlighting how team dynamics affect investor confidence.

“Once my co-founder and I developed a cadence that allowed us to highlight our strengths, I believe it resonated more deeply with investors,” Ben shared in startup strategy discussions. “This allowed investors to understand how our interpersonal dynamic worked, which truly translates to what areas of the business we each excel at.”

Ben emphasizes preparation and perspective.

“I wish I had given more credit in the early days to VCs for being smart and rational people who had more empathy than I thought for the plight of a startup. I think it’s important to try to put yourself in a VC’s shoes,” he said.

His hard-won wisdom includes testing pitches with advisors who give “harsh and real truths,” preparing thoroughly for process questions about hiring and marketing plans, and developing thoughtful answers to forward-looking questions like “Where do you see this business in five years?”