We Need to Talk About Your Pitch Deck

This is an intervention. If your pitch deck resembles those I’ve reviewed in recent weeks, there’s work to do.

There is no shortage of “definitive” pitch deck templates online. Let me give you the rules behind the guides, so you can structure the most effective deck for your situation. Already have a deck? See if it meets the rules below.

The Golden Deck Duality

There are only two things a pitch deck must do:

1.???? Make the audience fall in love with the opportunity

2.???? Convince the audience that you are the best team to successfully execute against that opportunity.

Simple—but that doesn’t mean easy. The opportunity must be big enough for VCs (a rule of thumb is a plausible path to $100m ARR within 5-7 years), and then the team has to be the most likely to succeed. Everyone talks about Product-Market Fit, but Founder-Market Fit is just as critical. Pretty much any big opportunity will have dozens of teams tackling it, and any good VC will be talking to most of them. So why is this your opportunity? Why will you walk through fire to win? Make sure that comes through. I once started a discount tour ticket business because I thought there would be a lot of money in it. After I failed, I was able to admit to myself that I was only attracted by the profits; I didn’t care about that industry.

Big Problems Big Solutions Rule

It’s jujitsu: The strength of the problem drives the power of your solution. If your audience isn’t trembling at the size and horror of the Jaws you’re describing, they won’t desperately want your spear gun. But stay away from broad and vague problems like “climate change.” Be specific. Make me feel the specific pain of a specific group, and why it’s about to get a whole lot worse.

The T-Cubed Rule

These are the 3 best ways to prove that your team is investable, in this order:

1.???? Traction: Are you already selling? Do you already have customers? Is your service already taking off? Nothing says “I can build success” like “I am already successful.” Even modest traction is impressive: $50k in sales is huge compared to $0. I see too many decks with impressive traction buried on slide 8.

2.???? Track Record: Have you been working in this industry for a long time? Did you build another successful startup? Emphasize anything that is a good pattern-match predictor for why you will win in your current endeavor.

3.???? Team: Does your team have any unfair advantages? Do you hail from great and relevant companies? Have you worked together a long time?

The One-Sided Conversation Rule

Just because you’re the only one talking doesn’t mean that the audience isn’t carrying on a dialogue with you. Everything you say triggers reactions in them. Perfection is when each slide you put up nails the next question forming in their minds. For example:

a.???? Start right: Meet the audience where they are. Avoid insider acronyms. Match your deck to your audience’s level of industry knowledge or scientific expertise your audience has. If “I’m lost” crosses their mind once, they’re lost to you forever.

b.???? Problem statement. Be specific and interesting. I’ve seen too many decks describe well-known problems like mental health/cancer/climate change over several pages. Your audience is thinking, “Well duh, I get that…but what do you want to do about it?”

c.???? The assumption of success. It’s not hard to conceive of ways the world would be a better place, but the status quo is a powerful force. So if your business model depends on virality, mass adoption, or your ability to change a complicated industry like the US healthcare system, the natural immediate response is “That sounds great, but how do you get to sufficient scale?” Answer that question immediately.

The Analogies Are Your Friend Rule

You often feel the need to explain everything first before you can explain everything else. Analogies help you buy time. An analogy like “we’re like a credit bureau for online reputation” gives the audience a framework to hang on to. Even if the audience understands by the end of the pitch that the analogy is substantially imperfect, you gave them a life raft early on to help them navigate the whitewater.

Corollary: Company analogies are powerful too. It’s impactful if you can make a plausible case that you’re just like this other successful company, just at an earlier stage.

The Headlines Summary Rule

The headlines atop each slide should sum up the point that slide is making. “Timeline” is not a point. Editorialize. “Substantial Progress Leads to Upcoming Value Inflection” tells a story of value creation. You should be able to flip through your deck reading only the headlines and get a summary of your pitch.

The Justifications-Are-Useless Rule

Professional investors hear hundreds of pitches a year and reject almost all of them. Social norms compel them to give some kind of justification. This might be thoughtful and valuable feedback, but it might also be cheap BS. “I want to see more traction first,” is perhaps the laziest response. Who doesn’t? It’s like walking into a casino and saying, “I’d like to see the dealer’s cards before I place my bet.” A key part of being a founder is getting a deluge of opinions and knowing which to ignore. Remember that usually, a no just means that you’re in the 99.9% of pitches that weren’t a fit for them.

The Opportunity Rule

It’s not an Ask slide, It’s an Opportunity slide. You’re not a beggar, you’re giving investors a way to multiply their money. Related to that, don’t tell me how you’re going to spend the money, tell me what value-creating milestones you’ll reach.

See? Easy, right? Now get back into that deck and send me the next draft.