Four questions to ask anything that promises you investors

1

Does it put a score or a grade on your company?

A number feels like progress. It is also the fastest way to start optimising for the number instead of the investor, and no partner has ever written a check because a deck scored 82 out of 100. Ask what happens to the score when you change one slide. If it moves a lot, it was never measuring much.

CherryPitch: no score, no grade and no fit label. Not on your company, and not on a match.

2

Where does the investor data come from, and when was it last checked?

This is the question that separates the serious from the rest, and almost nobody volunteers the answer. A tool can read your deck beautifully and still match you against a list licensed two years ago.

Ask for a date. Then ask whether the data describes what a fund says it does or what it has actually done. Those are two different records and they disagree more often than founders expect.

CherryPitch: keeps its own investor records and rebuilds them every day.

3

Can it tell you why this investor and not another one?

Not why the sector fits. Why that firm, in a sentence you could repeat back to them, traceable to something they have actually funded.

A tool that cannot answer this is handing you a filtered list with better branding.

4

Who is the customer?

You are either paying for the product or you are the product. A free tool built by a venture firm produces deal flow for that firm. A free database earns from something other than your raise. None of that is dishonest, and all of it shapes what you get.

CherryPitch: paid for by founders. Your deck is never shown to an investor unless you send it.