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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1. Know your audience.

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.

2. Understand the goal.

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.

3. Ditch the table of contents.

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.

4. Invest your energies where it counts the most.

Investors will spend the most time on these 6 slides:

- Product
- Business model
- Go to market strategy
- Traction
- Competition
- Team