Your deck isn't read. It's reopened.

Four minutes. That's the average time an investor spends on a single view of a pitch deck, according to Papermark's 2026 fundraising report, which tracked 358,672 investor views across 24,541 decks, 60% of those views lasted under 10 seconds.

Most fundraising data I come across is survey work. Partners describing what they believe they do, which is a different thing from what they do. This set is behavioural; 15.2 million page level data points, 1.37 million minutes of reading, readers in 184 countries. Nobody was performing for a questionnaire.

I spent a weekend with it. Below is what I think matters, what I think gets overread, and what I'd change in a deck this week if I were the one raising.

Median dwell time per slide across the whole set is 3.3 seconds. Hold on to that number, because everything else is measured against it.

The team slide is the most read page in a typical deck, at 5.7 seconds a view. The cover runs about 45% above median. Appendix pages get under two seconds, which is roughly how long it takes to decide not to read something.

Two things in here surprised me.

The first is financials. Only 40% of decks include a financial slide, yet the ones that exist hold above median attention. Investors go looking for it, and six in ten founders give them nothing to find. I spend most of my week inside founders' P&Ls, and this is the cheapest gap to close in the entire report. You don't need a five year model on a slide. You need one honest view of revenue, burn, and what this round buys.

The second is traction. Decks that put traction in the first three slides got 20% more views and the most total reading time. Not better designed decks. Just earlier proof.

Fewer than half of investors reach the final slide. That part I expected. What I didn't expect is where they leave: the biggest single drop in the data sits between slide one and slide two.

Which means the cover has a job most founders never give it. It decides whether there is a slide two. A cover with a logo and "Seed round, 2026" is a wasted page. A cover that says what you do, for whom, and one number showing it works is a reason to keep going.

PS: When an investor is serious, they read the boring slides.

There's a second detail worth sitting with. Decks that went on to close got 37% more time per page in the back half, and double the total reading time: 36 minutes against a median of 18. I wouldn't read that as (polish your back half). I'd read it as a tell. Interest shows up as patience with the dull pages, the unit economics, the use of funds. Keep that in mind for the section on follow ups.

The sweet spot is 9 to 16 pages, and 46% of decks already live there. The peak is 12 slides; 34 average views, a 68% return visit rate, and half of all readers reaching the end.

Go to 16 or 18 pages and completion drops to about 40%. Going from 8 pages to 16 costs roughly 20 points of completion. But shorter isn't automatically safer. Decks under 9 pages averaged 17 views, against 27 for decks of 9 to 24 pages. Too thin, and there's nothing worth forwarding to a partner.

The rule I always give is blunt. If a slide exists to answer a question the investor hasn't asked yet, it goes in the appendix or the data room. It will get its two seconds there, and that's fine. It's not for the first read. It's for the second.

A third of decks (34%) are opened within the first hour. The median wait to the first open is 7.9 hours. Three days later, 24% still haven't been opened at all.

Then there's the number I'd put on a sticky note above the desk: 26.5% of decks get reopened on a later day.

A first open is curiosity. It might be an associate clearing an inbox at 11pm. A reopen days later usually means someone is getting ready to talk about you, to a partner or to themselves on a Monday morning. That is the moment to follow up. Not the Tuesday you promised yourself.

Downloads are the quieter signal. Only 18% of founders allow them at all, but a downloaded deck is often one headed into a partner meeting. People don't save files they plan to forget.

92% of founders turn on alerts for every view. Then 79% send the same link to every investor. That's installing a camera and pointing it at the ceiling. You'll know someone walked in. You won't know who.

The real goal is making views attributable to the right investor. Some founders solve that with separate links for each investor. Others use Helm that let them keep a single link while still knowing who's viewing.

While you're there, turn downloads on. Access restrictions are almost never switched on, and at seed stage that's usually the right call. Friction costs you more than leakage does.

Median time from first investor view to an announced round is 6 months. Two thirds of rounds land somewhere between 3 and 12. The average deck is read across a 59 day window, 29% are opened exactly once and never again, and one in five is still collecting views after three months.

This is the finance side footnote. Plan your runway around that median, not the story from the friend who closed in five weeks. If you have nine months of cash and the typical raise takes six, you are not early. You're on time, with very little room for a soft quarter in between.

Video. The sample is small (29 videos, 357 views), so take it as directional. Median length was 4:33 with 31% of viewers left in the first tenth, about 27 seconds in, yet 43% watched to the very end. My read is that video works as a follow up for someone already leaning in. It's a poor cold opener.

Geography. The US accounts for 33% of views, the UK 9%, Germany 8%. Two thirds of all views come from outside the US. Readers in Switzerland, Australia and Germany spend roughly twice as long per view, and about half of German readers reach the last slide against roughly a third in Singapore. If your list leans European, a slightly denser deck is less of a risk than you'd think.

In order, because the first three cost nothing and the last one changes your cash plan.

Founders ask me this constantly, usually after refreshing their dashboard for the fourth time in an afternoon.

Here's the reference sheet. Compare yourself against the typical number, not the average; a few outliers drag the averages up.

Two honest caveats. This data comes from founders who chose to use a deck tracking tool, which probably skews toward founders who are already organised about their raise. And "decks that closed got twice the reading time" is a correlation. Good companies get read more; being read more doesn't make a company good.

So use these numbers to remove friction, not to manufacture interest. A tighter cover, earlier proof, a real financial slide and a followup at the right moment won't rescue a weak business. They will stop a good one from losing investors on slide two.

If you need help, feel free to schedule a call with me here.

Talk soon,
Imane