A practical guide for founders. What it is, what slides matter, how to write each one, and the mistakes that cost most rounds.
Build Your Deck See real examples →The short answer: it's a brief visual presentation that gives investors an overview of your business, your plan, and your traction.
A pitch deck is typically 10 to 20 slides designed to give a clear, condensed summary of your company, your plan, and your vision. It's the document founders send before a meeting and walk through during one.
Think of your pitch deck as your business's elevator pitch in visual form. It should tell a clear story about your company in a way that captures attention, communicates the opportunity, and makes investors want to learn more.
A pitch deck does more than describe your company — the process of writing one forces you to think clearly about it.
Forces you to distil your business idea into its core components. If you can't pitch it on a slide, you probably can't pitch it at all.
A standardised way to communicate with investors who review hundreds of pitches. Speaks to them in the format they expect.
Writing the deck surfaces gaps in your strategy. The slides you struggle to fill out are the parts of your business you haven't figured out yet.
The same narrative works for partners, customers, advisors, and senior hires. One deck, many uses.
A typical pitch deck includes these slides in roughly this order. Not every business needs all 13 — pick what's relevant for your stage and round.
Five things that separate a deck that opens doors from one that gets archived.
The mistakes that kill more rounds than bad ideas do.
Cramming every detail onto every slide. Keep it high-level — details belong in follow-up meetings, not the first deck.
Failing to articulate the problem clearly, or making it sound too small to matter. If the problem doesn't land, nothing else does.
Not being specific about how much you need and what you'll do with it. Vague asks read as unprepared.
Claiming you have no competition. Investors hear that and think you don't understand your market.
Hockey-stick growth without the assumptions to support it. Investors discount every number on the slide afterwards.
Inconsistent fonts, clashing colours, low-resolution screenshots. The deck is a proxy for the quality of the company.
The slides matter. The delivery matters more. Here's what to think about before, during, and after.
A few decks that closed real rounds and are now studied as case studies. Each one shows a different way to tell the story.
The minimalist marketplace pitch. Clear problem, clear solution, simple market sizing. Vision-led, with no significant traction at the time.
Focused tightly on the transportation pain point and showed why mobile changed the equation. A textbook “why now” deck.
Joel Gascoigne led with traction on slide two. The traction-led seed playbook for SaaS founders.
For full slide-by-slide breakdowns, head to the case studies — we cover Airbnb, Uber, Buffer, LinkedIn, Front, Tinder, Dropbox, Mint, and the Sequoia template.
The questions founders ask most often when they're about to write their first pitch deck.
Most pitch decks are 10 to 20 slides for live presentations, and can stretch to around 25 if you're sending it for review. Each slide should focus on a single point.
Most pitch presentations run 10 to 15 minutes, leaving time for questions and discussion. Always check what format and timing your audience prefers.
Yes, but keep them high-level. Include key metrics like revenue projections, customer acquisition costs, and funding requirements. Save the detailed financials for follow-up meetings.
Focus on validation signals: customer interviews, pilot programmes, pre-orders, partnerships, or a waiting list. Show evidence that people want what you're building, even before launch.
The core content can stay the same, but tailor it for the audience. Investors, customers, and partners each care about different things.
Knowing what makes a pitch deck work is half the battle. The other half is sitting down and writing one. Let MyPitchDecks help you do both.
Build Your Pitch Deck Read the Case Studies