At TechCrunch Disrupt, three investors took the stage to dissect what makes — and breaks — a pitch deck. Jyoti Bansal, a founder-turned-investor; Medha Agarwal of Defy; and Jennifer Neundorfer of January Ventures shared with the crowd their candid views on what works in a pitch deck — and what doesn’t.

Their biggest pet peeve? Buzzword overload.

The more a founder says AI in the pitch, Agarwal said, the less AI the company likely uses. “The people who are doing things that are really innovative, they’ll talk about it, and it’s built in, but it’s not the core of their pitch,” she told the audience.  

Bansal, who built and sold multiple companies before becoming an investor, distilled investor expectations into three core questions. First, he asks whether there is a large enough market to tackle. Does the founder’s idea have the potential to become a huge company? And is the problem he or she is solving actually worth solving?

The second thing investors want to know is why this founder is the one who should be building the company. “There has to be something unique about you,” Bansal told the crowd, adding that this included having special members on the founding team or having special skills. “Why would you win? If the problem is interesting, there will be 20 other companies trying to solve it, so why would you win and what’s your opportunity?”  

The third thing investors want to see, Bansal said, is some validation. “Traction with customers,” he said. “Validation could be initial customer feedback, revenue, something, but some kind of validation.”  

These three questions, Bansal noted, all lead to the ultimate litmus test: Could this become a billion-dollar company?

The panel also addressed how AI startups can differentiate themselves as the space becomes saturated. Bansal emphasized the importance of domain expertise and a clear competitive strategy. Neundorfer said the companies that catch her attention are those enabling new behaviors rather than simply improving an existing process incrementally.  

Agarwal offered more tactical advice to founders, saying they should explain how AI technology enables their product; articulate clear go-to-market strategies; and demonstrate how their business will be more efficient than incumbents.

It’s also very important to be honest about what competitors are out there, she added. Some of you have “lost some credibility with me because you didn’t have it on your slide,” she told the founders in the audience. 

Finally, the investors shared advice for navigating the rapidly evolving landscape. Agarwal urged founders to stay on top of industry developments. Neundorfer recommended staying connected to founder networks to share tools and insights.

Bansal’s advice was simpler: “Focus on building your product.”

There has been a flurry of AI voice recording gadgets like Omi, Bee, and Friend that want to capture your voice and let you converse with an AI chatbot. While Bee was acquired by Amazon, and devices like the Stream ring by Sandbar and a new AI ring from former Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky are set to enter the market next year, the jury is still out on the success of wearable AI devices.

Amid all this, Plaud is thriving by targeting professional users with a different approach: a credit card-sized recording device that slips into your wallet. The company says it has shipped more than a million units and that more than 50% of its customers have converted to pro subscriptions.

The company’s latest iteration, the Plaud Note Pro, launched for pre-order in August two years after the original Note, priced at $179. After using the device for over a month, it has become an essential part of my daily carry – and its ultra-thin design makes that easy.

At just 0.12 inches thick – about the width of three stacked credit cards – it’s the thinnest AI recording device on the market and easily fits in a wallet or attaches magnetically to the back of your phone.

The company provides a wallet-like pouch and a magnetic ring accessory that attaches to MagSafe-enabled phones, allowing you to mount the Note Pro on the back of your iPhone or compatible Android device. The device is also very light at 30 grams, and you won’t feel the weight if you keep the Note Pro in your wallet.

One of the key differences between Plaud and other AI wearables is that the Note Pro doesn’t need to be connected to your phone to record audio. The device has 64GB of onboard memory, so it can store a large volume of recordings without transferring them to your phone or uploading them to the cloud.

Plaud Note Pro has four MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) microphones to pick up audio from all directions. While the company advertises that the effective audio range is 16.4 feet, I have recorded talks at conferences while sitting far from the stage and gotten satisfactory results. The device also has one voice processing unit for noise suppression, voice isolation, and echo cancellation.

The recording device has impressive battery life. I went to a conference earlier this month with a fully charged device and recorded a few interviews and talks there. After that, I used the device for some phone call recording and personal note-taking. Despite all that use, the device still had 55% charge after 15 days. The company says you can wring 30 hours of continuous recording and 60 days of standby from a single charge.

Plaud’s new device comes with a proprietary charger with a USB-C cable on the other end. The device takes two hours to charge from 0%, and then you are set for at least a couple of weeks unless you are recording hours of content.

One problem with wearable AI devices is that you have to ensure, through an indicator, that the device is recording (or has stopped recording). Thankfully, Plaud Note Pro has a tiny screen that displays your recording status. You can also press a button while recording to highlight a point a speaker is making, and it will show up in the AI-powered summary prominently. The screen also shows you the remaining battery level.

There is intentionality behind recording with this device. You also get haptic feedback for starting and stopping the recording. The visual indication and your action of pressing the button also make it easier to signal to a others in the meeting that you are recording the session.

You can choose to just record sessions and export them to another AI transcription service you are subscribed to. Plaud natively provides 300 minutes of free transcription every month. The company also lets you customize AI-generated notes through templates suited for different profiles and tasks. You can create your own template as well. The transcription is accurate in most instances, and now you can also access the recording, transcript, and notes through a website. The company has also addressed the problem my former colleague Brian Heater had of tapping on the word and not being played the corresponding recording.

While a pendant or pin-like form factor is possibly easier to carry, the card-sized recorder offers better microphones and more versatile placement options. It’s worth buying the $179 gadget if you take a lot of in-person meetings.

When Kevin Hartz’s security system failed to alert him as an intruder rang his doorbell and tried to enter his San Francisco home late one night, the serial entrepreneur decided existing solutions weren’t good enough. His co-founder Jack Abraham had experienced similar frustrations at his Miami Beach residence.

In 2024, they launched Sauron — named after the sinister, all-seeing eye from “The Lord of the Rings” — to build what they envisioned as a military-grade home security system for tech elites. The concept resonated in Bay Area circles, where crime had become a constant topic during and after the pandemic, despite San Francisco Police Department statistics showing property crime and homicide rates declining last year.

The startup raised $18 million from executives behind Flock Safety and Palantir, defense tech investors including 8VC, Abraham’s startup lab Atomic, and Hartz’s investment firm A*. It came out of stealth exactly a year ago, promising to launch in the first quarter of 2025 with a system combining AI-driven intelligence, advanced sensors like LiDAR and thermal imaging, and 24/7 human monitoring by former military and law enforcement personnel.

But a year later, Sauron is still very much in development mode — a reality that its new CEO, Maxime “Max” Bouvat-Merlin, acknowledged candidly in a recent interview with TechCrunch.

After nearly nine years at Sonos, including a stint as chief product officer, Bouvat-Merlin took the helm of Sauron just last month. He’s spending his first days on the job finalizing fundamental questions: which sensors to use, how exactly the deterrence system will work, and when the company can realistically get products into customers’ homes.

The answer to that last question? Later in 2026 at the earliest — a significant delay from the original timeline.

“We’re in the development phase,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “You’ll see a phased approach where we get our solution to market as a stepping stone. All the different components — our concierge service, our AI software running on servers, our smart cameras — are building blocks coming together in a plan we just put in place very recently.”

Still, Bouvat-Merlin sees striking parallels between Sauron and Sonos, which both target wealthy customers first, rely on word-of-mouth growth, and combine complex hardware with sophisticated software. “I had lunch with John MacFarlane, the founder of Sonos, a few weeks ago,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “All the topics he was thinking about when starting Sonos were exactly the same topics we’re discussing at Sauron.”

Both companies faced the same strategic questions: Start with super-premium customers or mass premium? Professional installation or DIY? Build everything in-house or partner with an ecosystem? “We might make different decisions, but the questions are very similar,” he said.

The security problem

Bouvat-Merlin says he was drawn to Sauron by both the mission and an opportunity to solve a real customer problem. “Securing people’s homes is important, but I also like the deterrence aspect — changing people’s minds before they make a bad decision and get into trouble,” he said.

His research showed that market leaders in premium home security have small market shares and negative Net Promoter Scores. “People are not happy with their solutions today,” he said. “There are so many false positives that when law enforcement is called, they don’t respond because they assume it’s a false alarm.”

The company is targeting customers “where safety and security is a major concern” — people like Hartz. The plan is to start with this premium segment, establish a reputation for supporting demanding clients, then expand to what Bouvat-Merlin calls “mass premium.”

The product (that’s still taking shape)

So what exactly is Sauron building? The answer is still evolving. The offering starts with camera pods containing multiple sensors — “40 cameras and different types of sensors, potentially LiDAR and radar, potentially thermal,” Bouvat-Merlin said. These pods connect to servers running machine learning software for computer vision, all linked to a 24/7 concierge service staffed by former military and law enforcement personnel.

“Those people understand patterns,” he said. “They’re good at helping us mature our machine learning solution and train our system to detect weird behaviors.”

The deterrence system remains somewhat vague. Options being considered include loudspeakers, flashing lights, and other methods. But Bouvat-Merlin emphasized that deterrence should begin before someone enters a property, detecting when homes are being surveilled, noticing cars circling neighborhoods multiple times, and identifying threats at each stage.

“The more upfront we are with deterrence, the more we can convince people this is the wrong house to rob and the wrong decision to make,” he said.

As for the drones mentioned when Sauron first took the wraps off its plans last year, Bouvat-Merlin declined to say much. “These are roadmap conversations. I don’t want to go too deep at this point because there are so many things we could do, but we’re such a small company,” he said. He added that, bigger picture, the focus is on growing the ecosystem through partnerships rather than reinventing the wheel.

Timeline and business model

With fewer than 40 employees, Sauron plans to hire just 10 to 12 more in 2026. The company will also begin working with early adopters later in 2026, with a Series A fundraise planned for mid-year.

“Raising a Series A is not about raising because we have to — it’s because we want to,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “I want to make sure we’re showing progress and explaining how we’ll use extra funds to accelerate growth, [including to] launch our first end-to-end product, drive customer adoption, and accelerate the roadmap.”

The company has already attracted a significant list of prospective clients, he said, thanks to work by Sauron’s three founders, which include roboticist and engineer Vasumathi Raman. “We expect the strategy initially to be word of mouth, then grow differently over time.”

But Bouvat-Merlin is cautious about growth. “I want to make sure we grow sustainably and keep the experience and service premium over time,” he said. “I want to manage growing pains as much as possible while driving profitability.”

The surveillance state question

Facial recognition and privacy concerns loom large for a surveillance-heavy product. Bouvat-Merlin outlined one approach: a trust-based system where homeowners grant access to specific people. “I granted you access to my house, so now you’re in the trusted group. When you come, I detect it’s you and you’re allowed in. Everyone else is an unknown person,” he said, painting a picture of a likely scenario.

License plate detection is also being considered for identifying cars circling neighborhoods multiple times. “How do we assess if that’s a threat? The ex-military and ex-law enforcement team will be really good at helping mature our machine learning solution,” he said.

Either way, Bouvat-Merlin is confident in the opportunity ahead because of Sauron’s approach. “A lot of companies started as traditional security companies and are trying to add tech,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “We’re looking at it from the opposite angle — we’re a tech startup in San Francisco bringing technology to this market.”

Sauron is also appearing on the scene as concerns rise about crime among the most wealthy. Recent high-profile incidents include a November armed robbery at the home of tech investors Lachy Groom and Joshua Buckley in San Francisco’s Mission District, where $11 million in cryptocurrency was stolen during a 90-minute ordeal involving torture and threats.

“We see people who are wealthy attracting criminals,” Bouvat-Merlin said. “We’ve seen a lot of robberies in San Francisco and other major U.S. cities, sometimes at gunpoint. I don’t think the world is getting safer — there are probably more disparities between people at the top and bottom of the wealth spectrum. We see anxiety from prospective clients who are eager to get their homes secured.”

Still, much remains uncertain about Sauron’s path. The company must finalize everything from sensor configurations to manufacturing locations. (Bouvat-Merlin mentioned potentially starting in the U.S. for proximity and control, then moving to more affordable locations as volume grows.)

It must also determine how to serve customers in different settings, from estates with perimeters to dense urban residences, while maintaining premium service quality.

For now, Bouvat-Merlin says he’s focused on listening to his team, building credibility, and finalizing the strategy he’s putting in place. “I don’t demand that people trust me — I want to show them why they should.”

The company expects to share more details about its products later next year.