Greg Stevenson says a board makes up its mind in the first five minutes based on how you walk in, your handshake, and whether you seem to belong. The slides mostly just confirm that first impression. Confidence and presence matter far more than the deck.
A board makes its real decision about you in the first 5 minutes, and it has almost nothing to do with your answers. Before you've made a single point, they've already read your walk-in, your handshake, whether you seem to belong in the room or to be auditioning for it. Everything you say after that mostly confirms the decision they have already made, and it rarely reverses it. So the work is not a better deck. It is arriving as someone who already belongs there. Because a board decides with its gut and then uses your slides to justify it.
