Startup pitch deck

Startup Pitch Deck

Before you start

Gather the following from the user:

1. What stage? (Pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B+)
2. How much are you raising? (Target amount and intended use of funds)
3. What is the product? (One-sentence description a non-expert would understand)
4. Do you have traction? (Revenue, users, growth rate, key metrics)
5. Who is the audience? (VC firm, angel investors, accelerator, corporate partnership)
6. How will this be presented? (Live pitch with Q&A, sent cold via email, both)

If the user wants to start with the solution slide, push back: "Investors fund problems, not solutions. Start with a problem so painful that the audience is already nodding before you show what you built."

Deck structure — slide by slide

A standard investor pitch deck is 10-14 slides. Every slide has one job. Below is the recommended order and content for each.

Slide 1: Title

[Company Name] — [what you do in 10 words or fewer]
[Presenter name, title] | Raising $X at [stage]

Slide 2: Problem

- Who has this problem (specific persona, not "everyone")
- How they solve it today (status quo)
- Why the status quo is painful (quantify: time, cost, error rate)
- Include one data point: "X% of [audience] report [problem]"

Slide 3: Solution

- What your product does (one paragraph, no jargon)
- How it solves the problem differently from the status quo
- One screenshot or diagram — show outcome, not feature list

Slide 4: Market size

TAM: Total Addressable Market — everyone who could theoretically buy
SAM: Serviceable Addressable Market — segment you can reach with current model
SOM: Serviceable Obtainable Market — realistic capture in 3-5 years

Present as: TAM $XB → SAM $YB → SOM $ZM
Cite sources for each number. "We estimated" is not a source.

Slide 5: Business model

- How you make money (subscription, usage, marketplace, licensing)
- Pricing: what the customer pays and how (per seat, per transaction, tiered)
- Unit economics: CAC, LTV, LTV:CAC ratio, gross margin
- If pre-revenue: planned pricing model with comparable benchmarks

Slide 6: Traction

Show a chart. Investors scan for slope, not absolute numbers.
- Revenue or MRR over time (best)
- User growth over time (acceptable at pre-seed/seed)
- Key milestones: launch date, notable customers, partnerships

Include 2-3 specific numbers:
"$X MRR, growing Y% month-over-month"
"Z paying customers including [notable name]"

Slide 7: Go-to-market

- How you acquire customers today (channel, cost)
- Top 2-3 channels you will scale
- Sales motion: self-serve, inside sales, enterprise sales, PLG
- Current CAC and target CAC at scale

Slide 8: Competitive landscape

Use a 2x2 matrix or comparison table. Position yourself in the best quadrant.
- Choose axes that highlight your differentiation
- Include direct competitors and the status quo
- One sentence on why your position is defensible

Never say "we have no competitors."

Slide 9: Team

- 2-4 founders/key hires with one-line bios
- Relevant experience: what in their background makes them the right team for THIS problem
- Notable: prior exits, domain expertise, technical depth
- Advisory board (if notable names)

Skip generic bios. "10 years of experience" means nothing. "Built the payments system at Stripe" means everything.

Slide 10: Financials

- 3-year projection: revenue, expenses, headcount
- Key assumptions stated explicitly (growth rate, conversion rate, churn)
- Current burn rate and runway

Slide 11: The ask

- Amount raising: $X
- Use of funds breakdown (product, hiring, GTM — percentages)
- Milestones this capital will achieve

Example: "Raising $3M seed to reach $1M ARR in 18 months"
"60% product, 30% GTM, 10% ops"

Slide 12: Appendix (optional)

Backup slides for Q&A: detailed financial model, product roadmap, customer testimonials, technical architecture.

Quality checklist

Before delivering the deck, verify:

• Every slide has one clear point — no slide tries to do two jobs
• Problem slide quantifies the pain with real data
• Market size uses TAM/SAM/SOM with cited sources
• Traction slide has a chart showing growth direction
• The ask states the amount, use of funds, and milestones
• No slide has more than 30 words of body text (slides are visual, not documents)
• The deck tells a story: problem, solution, proof, team, ask
• Competitive slide does not claim "no competitors"

Common mistakes

• Too many words per slide. If you have to read the slide to the audience, it's a document, not a deck. Use visuals, charts, and short phrases. Save detail for the appendix.
• Market size without bottom-up validation. "The global SaaS market is $200B" tells investors nothing. Build market size bottom-up: number of target customers times price per customer.
• Traction slide without a trend. A single number ("we have 500 users") is a snapshot. A chart showing 500 users growing 15% month-over-month is a story. Always show trajectory.
• Burying the ask. Some decks spend 12 slides on the product and one rushed slide on the raise. The ask is the purpose of the deck — give it a dedicated slide with clear numbers.
• Generic team bios. "Jane has 15 years of experience in technology" does not explain why Jane is the right person to solve this specific problem. Connect each team member's background to the company's mission.