Active investors sift through dozens of deals a week, and some hundreds a month. In order to find the gold, they need to quickly weed out the junk. The junk usually involves startups with any one of three red flags that deems the deal a “pass.”

Unfortunately startup founders are rarely aware of these flags, or choose to ignore them. Regardless of whether you believe these flags apply to your startup or not, you can be sure that investors will be far more critical of your progress and your deal traction.

No Traction

Traction is your ability to demonstrate you can move the ball forward, with or without funding. Traction comes from signing up early customers, generating some revenue, or demonstrating high user growth.

Startups often complain t...