This article was drafted together with AI and reviewed by an editor. It draws on an external article, which is credited at the bottom.
When writing a grant application or IR materials, we tend to suspect first that "the idea is weak." The articles we referred to say the opposite: structure comes first. Evaluators have to find the core in a very short time, and if the core is not where they look, they move on even when the idea is good. We do not repeat the specific figures the referenced article gave (such as how long a pitch deck is viewed) because we could not verify them. We only organize the order of the structure check our own way.
1. Start backwards from the evaluation criteria
Open the call's scoring sheet first, and for each item make a table of "which sentence on which page of my document answers this?" Any empty item is the first thing to fix.
2. Does the one-page summary stand on its own?
Check whether, from the first page alone, you can see "whose problem, solved how, why us, and how much is needed." If you cannot, fixing the later pages is pointless.
3. Keep the order problem → solution → market
If the technical explanation comes before the problem, evaluators get lost. Show the size of the problem and the cost customers pay now first.
4. Attach a source and an as-of date to every number
Market size and performance metrics without a source and an as-of date actually become grounds for point deductions. Do not use figures you could not verify, or label them "estimate."
5. Use AI as the judge
Feed in the finished document and ask, "If it were scored with this scoring sheet, on which items would it lose points?" As noted earlier, the key is to ask not "Is it well written?" but where it would lose points. Presenting it as "one applicant's document" rather than as mine, with the information that it is mine removed, gets a colder answer.
Final check
Before submitting, check the file format, file size and missing attachments. No matter how good the content, if it fails on format it will not even be read.
Further reading
This article was rewritten from our own team's perspective and standards, drawing on the concerns raised in the articles below. We did not follow their wording or structure, and where we could not verify a figure an original article cited against the primary data, we marked it as such. For some of the original articles, the full text opens only after logging in, so we read them based on the publicly available portion.
- learn.bizni.usWhat Rejected Plans and IR Have in Common Is Structure, Not the Idea (Korean) (BIZNIUS LEARN:US)
- learn.bizni.usInvestors Look at a Pitch Deck for 2 Minutes 24 Seconds (Korean) (BIZNIUS LEARN:US)
- learn.bizni.usThree Things to Prepare Before a Lecture (Korean) (BIZNIUS LEARN:US)
Also checked against other sources: