1. Boring. Even though the market's needs and your solutions aren't boring, bring them to life through stories that resonate, rather than by merely recounting "facts." Tell us about people with passion and intelligence, great ideas, interesting beginnings, how and why you jumped in, and how the world gets better as your business grows.


2. Financials without assumptions. It's clearly-stated assumptions that make financial projections interesting or compelling. Bring them to life with pictures, people, stories, and prospects. Numbers by themselves are just numbers. Explain what makes your numbers fascinating. Do some research, and find out how others liven up their business presentations.


3. Slides full of words. If you're using slides in any part of your presentation, don't fill them with words. Use slides to depict what you're saying. When you read off a slide you're losing your audience.


4. Buzzwords. Don't use trendy buzzwords like "cutting edge" or "viral." Being trendy in word choice diminishes your uniqueness and detracts from your substance. Plus, it makes you look like you think being trendy is important ... which it's not.


5. Complicated Numbers. Enable your readers to judge your projections for realism and credibility. All they need is sales, costs, expenses, cash flow, and other basic numbers. Complicated analyses like internal rates of return, net present value, and discounted cash flow may make you look like you got A's in business school, but your investor needs realistic and very clear numbers based on solid and well-presented assumptions. If they want an IRR they'll do it themselves, or ask you for it.


6. "And the market is "t h i s   b i g." Attempting to validate your prospective sales by talking about the vast multi-billion dollar market and how big your slice will be falls flat. It's best to validate your sales from the bottom up - by illustrating the merit and accuracy of your assumptions.


7. Bluster. Be clear about uncertainties and what you don't know. Don't bluff prospective investors.


8. Flowery Adjectives. Just tell the essentials of your story (what you have, how you got where you are, where you're going, and how you're getting there), and let your reader decide the adjectives. If you call it "great" or "disruptive" the investor thinks you're puffing and becomes a skeptic. 

Ending Sentences with Prepositions.  

The spurious rule about not ending sentences with prepositions is a remnant of Latin grammar, in which a preposition was the one word that a writer could not end a sentence with. But Latin grammar should never straitjacket English grammar. If the superstition is a "rule" at all, it is a rule of rhetoric and not of grammar, the idea being to end sentences with strong words that drive a point home. That principle is sound, but not to the extent of meriting lockstep adherence or flouting established idiom.

The idea that a preposition is ungrammatical at the end of a sentence is often attributed to 18th-century grammarians. But that idea is greatly overstated. Bishop Robert Lowth, the most prominent 18th-century grammarian, wrote that the final preposition "is an idiom, which our language is strongly inclined to: it prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style in writing." A Short Introduction to English Grammar 137 (rev. ed. 1782).

Winston Churchill's witticism about the absurdity of this bugaboo should have laid it to rest. When someone once upbraided him for ending a sentence with a preposition, he rejoined, "That is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put." Avoiding a preposition at the end of the sentence sometimes leads to just such a preposterous monstrosity.

Perfectly natural-sounding sentences end with prepositions, particularly when a verb with a preposition-particle appears at the end (as in "follow up" or "ask for"). E.g.: "The act had no causal connection with the injury complained of." When one decides against such formal (sometimes downright stilted) constructions as "of which," "on which," and "for which" -- and instead chooses the relative "that" -- the preposition is necessarily sent to the end of the sentence: "This is a point on which I must insist" becomes far more natural as "This is a point that I must insist on."

Good writers don't hesitate to end their sentences with prepositions if doing so results in phrasing that seems natural.