Ten slides, in the order conviction actually forms
Three rules hold every slide
One idea per slide
The headline states the idea in a full sentence. Everything below it is evidence. If two ideas are fighting, you have two slides.
Every number is dated and sourced
One figure you can’t defend in the follow-up call costs you the credibility of every other figure in the deck.
The order is the argument
Market before solution, and we’re evaluating a market. Solution first, and we’re evaluating you.
Move a slide and you break the logic, not the layout.
Why now, why this, why you
Three acts, in that order. Each one closes a question the next act depends on. A deck that skips an act gets diligence questions instead of a term sheet.
Show the ground moving under the market before you say anything about yourself.
Slides: 01 Cover · 02 Trend · 03 ProblemA genuinely new way, priced as a repeatable unit, in a market you can count.
Slides: 04 Solution · 05 Business model · 06 MarketProve you’re the ones who win it, then name the trade you’re asking us to make.
Slides: 07 Competition · 08 Team · 09 The equation · 10 ContactThe best pitches spend longer in the problem than in the solution
Founders do the opposite, and it’s an honest mistake: we love our solution, we’ve lived inside it for two years, and we mistake that love for evidence. The room isn’t there yet. Investors buy the problem first. They need to see a large problem people will pay to solve, and they want a founder who deeply understands that pain from the customer’s perspective.
The check. Rehearse with a timer. If slide 04 runs longer than slide 03, you’re presenting to yourself.
What each slide has to earn
For each slide: the job it does, what goes on it, how it usually fails, and the question it has to answer for the people in the room.
Cover
Tell us who is talking, then get out of the way.
- Company name, at display size.
- Your name and role, one line each.
- Stage and date. Nothing else.
Fails when the tagline, the logo wall and the raise amount all fight for the same square inch.
The question in the room: Who am I listening to, and why them?Trend
Prove the ground is already moving, and that you didn’t move it.
- One sentence naming the shift already underway.
- Two dated figures pointing the same direction.
- A source line under each figure.
Fails when the shift is a forecast we have to take on faith rather than a change we can already verify.
The question in the room: Why is this possible now and not three years ago?Problem
Quantify the pain, then earn the right to solve it.
- Three costed symptoms: money lost, days waited, systems re-keyed.
- One story in your own voice explaining how you saw this first.
- The person who feels it, named by title.
Fails when the problem is described in adjectives (fragmented, manual, broken) instead of numbers.
The question in the room: Does anyone already pay to make this go away?Solution
Describe the new way, not the feature list.
- One sentence of mechanism: what happens, and what makes it possible.
- Three steps, end to end, in the customer’s language.
- The before and after a customer would recognize.
Fails when it could have been built five years ago. Then the trend slide was decoration.
The question in the room: What is now true that wasn’t before?Business model
Show the unit you sell and the motion that repeats.
- Real prices, packaged, per unit sold.
- The land, the expansion, and where pull comes from.
- Four numbers: ACV at land, ACV at 24 months, NRR, CAC payback.
Fails when pricing reads “contact us” inside your own fundraising deck.
The question in the room: Does the second sale cost less than the first?Market
Count the customers. Don’t quote the analyst.
- TAM, SAM and a three-year SOM, each defined in one line.
- Your bottom-up arithmetic, visible: customers × units × price.
- Who the customers in the SOM actually are.
Fails when the only defense of the number is a report somebody else wrote.
The question in the room: How big can this get before it caps out?Competition
Pick the two axes on which you actually win.
- Two axes a customer would use to choose.
- Every real alternative plotted, including the spreadsheet.
- One line on why the incumbents can’t follow you.
Fails when you sit alone in the top right and nobody explains why that corner stayed empty.
The question in the room: What happens when the biggest player notices?Team
Answer “why this team, for this problem” line by line.
- Two or three founders, one line each tying past work to this problem.
- The scar tissue: what you ran, at what scale.
- Advisors only if they open a door you can’t open yourself.
Fails when the logos are impressive and irrelevant to the problem on slide three.
The question in the room: Have they lived this problem before?The equation
State the trade: traction today, plus this capital, equals this enterprise value. The power is in your ability to go deep on every element in the slide. This is the slide investors photograph.
- Traction: ARR, customers, growth, NRR.
- Use of funds: name tangible assets.
- New $EV at 24 months, in the same four metrics.
Fails when the use of funds is “hiring and marketing”, and the outcome is a hockey stick with no arithmetic.
The question in the room: What does my money actually buy? Work the numbers out first in the core value equation.Contact
Leave exactly one door open.
- Name, email, mobile: the founder’s, not info@.
- One next step: data room, reference customer, product session.
Fails when the deck ends on “thank you”, and the next move is left to us.
The question in the room: What is the very next thing I can do?Six checks that catch most of the damage
- Every figure carries a date and a source, including the ones you’re proud of.
- Each headline is a full sentence stating the slide’s one idea.
- Slide 09 survives a line-by-line follow-up call without new spreadsheets.
- The deck reads correctly forwarded, with nobody there to narrate it.
- Ten slides in the deck. Everything else lives in the appendix or the data room.
- Coaching notes and placeholder numbers are gone before it leaves your laptop.
Build the ten slides, already designed
The pitch deck builder walks you through the same ten slides in order, with this guidance beside each one and an illustrative company to write over. It ends with a review of your deck against the checks above, and a download you can present as-is or print to PDF.