Erik joined Karl Österberg on the Nordic Founders podcast last week to talk about what VCs actually look at in the first ninety seconds of a pitch deck. It was a good conversation — Karl pushed on the things founders usually get wrong and didn't let the answers stay at the generic level.

A few of the topics we got into:

• Why warm intros still dominate at Nordic seed, and what "warm" actually means in practice

• The gap between what founders think investors look at and what they actually look at

• Why the cover slide and the ask slide carry more weight than anything in between

• How our screening framework came out of watching hundreds of screenings go wrong

• The quiet rise of solo GPs in Nordic seed rounds, and what that means for founders building their target list

The full episode is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and the usual places. It's about 45 minutes. If you only have ten, skip to minute 22 — that's where the conversation about model red flags starts, and it's the most useful stretch for founders currently putting a raise together.

If any of it resonates with something you're working through, feel free to reach out. A first conversation is always free and usually useful even if we don't end up working together.