How do I write a pitch deck?
A pitch deck is a 10–12 slide presentation that tells the story of your startup to investors. It's not the pitch itself — the verbal conversation is what gets funded — but a well-structured deck is what gets you in the room.
The 10 slides investors expect
Problem
The pain you're solving. One sentence. If investors don't feel the pain, nothing else matters.
Solution
Your product and why it solves the problem better than what exists today.
Market Size
TAM, SAM, SOM. Show you're going after something big enough to be venture-scale.
Product
Screenshots, demo, or mockups. Show, don't describe.
Traction
Revenue, users, growth rate, retention. Traction beats everything else.
Business Model
How you make money. Pricing, margins, unit economics.
Team
Why you and your co-founders are the right people to solve this. Relevant experience only.
Competition
Who else is solving this. Positioning matrix. Why you win a specific segment.
Financials
18-month projection at minimum. Key assumptions clearly stated.
The Ask
How much you're raising, what you'll use it for, key milestones it funds.
The most important slide: Problem
Investors make a go/no-go decision within the first two slides. If the problem isn't compelling — if it doesn't feel real and painful — the rest of the deck won't recover. Your problem slide should be one sentence, specific, and ideally backed by a data point or a customer quote.
Bad: "Businesses struggle with communication." Good: "SMB teams spend 4 hours per week copying data between tools that don't integrate — costing $8,400/year per employee in lost productivity."
What investors actually look for
At pre-seed and seed stage, the priority order is: team → market → traction → product. A great team in a massive market with early traction will get funded even without a polished product. A polished product in a tiny market with no traction rarely does.
If you have traction, put it on slide 1 or 2. Never bury your best signal.
Common mistakes
- Too many slides — keep to 10–12. Every extra slide is a reason to lose attention.
- No clear ask — investors need to know how much you want and what you'll use it for.
- Vanity metrics — total signups, app downloads, or social followers without revenue or retention data.
- No competitive slide — "we have no competitors" is a red flag, not a green one.
- Financial projections without assumptions — show your math. Investors know projections are guesses; they want to see the logic.
The deck is not the pitch
Your deck is a leave-behind. The meeting itself is what gets funded. Practice telling your story without the slides. The deck should reinforce what you say, not be a script you read from. Investors fund people, not presentations.