What VCs think of AI: It's making founders sound bland

I’ll keep saying it until I’m blue in the face: AI is the great leveller. Not because it makes everyone better, but because it pulls everyone towards the middle.

That is a serious problem in fundraising, because investors do not fund the middle. They fund conviction, clarity, difference and judgement. When every pitch deck starts to look the same, read the same and make the same strategic claims, the founder begins to disappear from the story.

The signal is disappearing

A pitch deck was never just a set of slides. It was evidence of how a founder thinks, how clearly they communicate and whether they can persuade customers, employees and investors to believe in something before it’s obvious.

AI has weakened this significantly. The language is cleaner, the structure is neater and the narrative often feels more professional, but that does not mean it is more persuasive. In many cases, it means the opposite.

Jay Kapoor, General Partner at VSC Ventures, put it well when he said: 

“If you can’t be bothered to differentiate your deck, how can you be trusted to differentiate your company?” 

Investors are already adapting

Founders often assume AI makes their deck stronger because it sounds more polished. Investors are seeing the same polish everywhere, so they are learning to discount it.

Simon Blakey, Angel Investor and VC at Playfair, said: 

“AI-generated decks look remarkably alike… the evidence I used to rely on to decide 1st meeting has stopped carrying any signal.” 

When everyone can produce the same level of acceptable output, acceptable output stops being impressive. Investors then look harder for what cannot be templated: market insight, founder judgement and a point of view that feels earned.

Conviction cannot be generated

The biggest mistake is believing AI can communicate your vision better than you can. It can improve wording, organise ideas and expose gaps, but it cannot create conviction.

Jamal K, Partner at Stellar Ventures, said: 

“You cannot polish [AI] slop into conviction… investors spot the difference in the first three slides.” 

Conviction comes from the decisions you’ve made. It comes from knowing why you chose this problem, why this matters to you, and why you’re willing to bet your career on it. AI cannot articulate these arguments for you.

Your job is not to sound impressive

Too many founders optimise for sounding professional. But your job is to make people believe you’re the person to build this company. That means your deck should reveal how you think. It should contain judgement, trade-offs and a clear view of the market.

A rough but specific deck is often stronger than a polished generic one. Investors can work with rough edges. They cannot work with a founder who has outsourced their point of view.

Use AI, but do not hide behind it

I am not arguing against AI. Used well, it can sharpen your thinking, test your logic and help you explain complex ideas more clearly. Here’s my belief: 

Use AI to support your thinking, not replace it. 

Don’t ask it to do its best impression of a passionate founder and then expect investors to feel conviction.

In a market where everyone has access to the same tools, originality becomes more valuable. The founders who stand out will be the ones whose thinking and passion come through in the slides.

If nothing else, remember this:

Nobody invests in a prompt. They invest in the person behind it.