Investors are quick to judge.
Weak decks get 90 seconds or less. A pitch deck must catch their interest in the first couple of slides.
If you can afford to, use a designer.
I received a pitch a day in 2021.
Trust me -- if you're lucky, investors will spend about 3 minutes reading your pre-seed deck the first time.
You need to make it count.
A plain-English thread for first-time founders on how.
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Investors are quick to judge.
Weak decks get 90 seconds or less. A pitch deck must catch their interest in the first couple of slides.
If you can afford to, use a designer.
You're not trying to put every last bit of information about your startup in your deck.
You're trying to get a meeting.
Don't try to force-feed the investor information. Leave out the minutiae.
Your pre-seed deck should be ~12 slides.
It signals "there's too much information in here".
Cut any slide that does not advance the narrative, like detailed financial projections. Your numbers are probably wrong anyway.
Investors will spend the most time on these 6 slides:
- Product
- Business model
- Go to market strategy
- Traction
- Competition
- Team
Build a narrative flow, starting with a slide about a problem to a solution to the product.
Use visuals. Illustrate important product features using wireframes, screenshots, embedded videos, or Figma mockups.
Use simple (correct!) analogies to explain the business model:
"Uber for X" or "Like Y but with better economics"
Be data-driven and explicit:
"We are targeting a Z% gross margin."
How will you acquire your first 1,000 customers?
You are your startup's first sales & marketing lead. Organic growth, not paid ads is how you'll prove to an investor that you can find product-market fit.
A 100-person survey isn't impressive.
You're pre-seed, so you don't need much (or any) revenues. But you do need commitment & grit.
Show traction appropriate to your stage, e.g. letters of intent, waitlists, customer pipeline, beta feedback.
That's superficial. If the problem you're addressing matters, your customers are already solving it somehow.
Think broadly. Include incumbents & hacks, tech or non-tech. And say what's special about your product compared to competitors.
