Every VC has a fear they rarely, if ever, say out loud. It isn’t losing money. They’ve all budgeted for that. (Nice to be able to budget for that, isn’t it?)
It’s missing the company that was obviously right in hindsight.
I tell founders on calls all the time that the best ones know how to put that fear to work. So how do you get it onto a pitch deck? Dollar bills and a hockey-stick curve heading for the moon, obviously.
Failing that, you do it with one well-chosen, well-worded slide: why now.
Sequoia’s pitch framework, which has shaped how a generation of founders and investors think about deck structure, lists “Why now?” as a question every deck must answer.
Most founders treat that slide as context: a market-size figure, a trend or two, somewhere in the middle, then move on. But “why now” isn’t background. It answers the question investors are silently asking: if this problem is real, why hasn’t it been solved already, and what makes it solvable now?
A good why-now slide does three things:
It explains why an old problem has become an attractive opportunity. It shows what the market isn’t seeing yet. And it makes the case that you are the company to ride those tailwinds.
What’s the Deel
One of the best examples I’ve seen up close is Deel.
They launched a remote-hiring platform in 2019, before anyone had heard of COVID. When the pandemic hit and they went out to raise, it would have been easy to put their success down to timing. Timing helped. It wasn’t what made the pitch.
I remember speaking with the founders during their raise. They weren’t arguing that remote work was growing. By then everyone could see that.
They were arguing about what it would mean. Companies weren’t going to stop needing people. They were going to stop needing those people to live nearby. And every company that wanted to hire across borders would suddenly need to employ, pay and stay compliant in countries it had never operated in.
And there was already evidence of demand. When a16z announced its investment in May 2020, it reported that more than 400 companies had adopted Deel since its launch the previous year.
Remote hiring was a thing. It wasn’t the THING.
In 2020 it became one. While the immediate fear was a hiring freeze, Deel’s Why Now argument looked further ahead: hiring was losing its borders.
Investors bought it. a16z led a $14 million Series A that May, closed entirely over video calls. By October 2025, Deel was raising its Series E at a $17.3 billion valuation.
Obviously right in hindsight.
A weak “why now” describes a trend. A strong one shows investors something you’ve understood about that trend that the market is still underestimating, and why your company is positioned to turn it into a business.
How to Build the Argument
Before working on the why-now slide, I ask founders three questions, and I want the answers written out in full sentences. Bullet points let you hide. Sentences don’t.
1. What has changed that makes this business more viable now?
It could be technology becoming affordable, a regulation opening a market, or customers becoming comfortable with something they previously resisted. For Deel, it was employers becoming willing to hire people who would never come into their office.
Be specific about what the change makes possible, not just that it happened.
2. What evidence shows customers are acting on that change?
A trend can attract attention long before it creates demand.
What are customers doing differently? Allocating budget? Replacing a workaround? Signing contracts? Which of those changes have you actually seen?
This is where your industry experience earn’s its keep. You know exactly how customers used to behave and what they used to put up with. Show the investor what they’re doing now that they wouldn’t have done before.
3. What can you secure now that will be harder to secure later?
Perhaps customers are choosing systems they’ll use for years. Distribution partners are committing to providers. Or each deployment gives you data and experience that make the next one easier.
Explain which advantage you’re positioned to build, and why moving now matters. “A competitor might do it” is only the start of an answer. What would they capture that becomes difficult to win back?
If there’s no credible closing window, don’t invent one. Evidence of growing demand is more convincing than a countdown you can’t defend.
Once you’ve answered those questions, decide how to show the argument: a cost threshold crossed, a change in buying behaviour, or a barrier removed. The slide should make the reasoning easy to follow.
That’s the fear we started with, put to honest use. Not a countdown. A consequence the investor hadn’t seen, and a company already turning it into a business.
Worth Asking
What do you understand about your market today that will look obvious in two years?
Hit reply with your answer. If all you can name is the trend, go one step further: what does it make your customer do differently?
Clipped
Bill Gross: The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed
Gross ranked 200 companies on five factors and found timing mattered more than the idea, the team or the funding. And here I thought timing was only a comedy thing. Watch it, then ask how many of his winners got lucky with timing, and what they’d have needed to know to make it deliberate.