VC deal flow is reported as a count because a count is easy to produce and flattering to quote. Four hundred companies seen sounds like a fund with reach. It is also entirely consistent with a fund seeing four hundred of the wrong companies, and the two numbers that would tell the difference are rarely on the same slide. This page sets out what to read instead, and why the second of them is uncomfortable.
Volume without a qualification rate says nothing
The useful figure is what share of what arrives is worth a real look. A fund seeing four hundred companies of which twelve qualify has a targeting problem that more volume will make worse, because the associate time spent screening is the scarce resource. Volume is a cost as much as an asset.
Time to decide, which is the uncomfortable one
How long a company sits between arriving and getting an answer. Long dwell times lose allocations in competitive rounds and, worse, they lose the introducer's willingness to send the next one. This number is unflattering at most funds, which is a reasonable argument for reading it rather than against.
What happened to the passes
The only honest feedback a fund gets on its own judgement. Of what you passed on eighteen months ago, what raised and at what. Funds that never look are calibrating on memory, and memory remembers the ones you were right about.
Sourcing quality is a channel question, not an effort question
If qualification rates differ sharply by channel, and they usually do, the answer is to shift effort rather than to add it. That comparison needs the source recorded at entry, which is one dropdown and the highest-return field in the whole record.
Questions people ask about vc deal flow
Is high deal flow good?
Only alongside a qualification rate. Four hundred companies of which twelve qualify is a targeting problem that volume makes worse.
What is a reasonable time to decide?
Shorter than yours, probably. The cost of slowness is not only lost allocations, it is introducers who stop sending.
How do we judge our own screening?
Look at what the passes did eighteen months later. Anything else is calibrating on a memory that flatters you.