What We Learned From Reviewing Hundreds of Pitch Decks

We’ve seen hundreds of pitch decks, met dozens of founders, and made dozens of decks. Here’s what we think works – and doesn’t work.

The Problem Slide Is Everything

This is where you win or lose. If an investor doesn’t lean forward on slide 2, the rest doesn’t matter. Yet most founders bury their best insight on slide 8. Lead with the problem. Make it visceral. Make it urgent.

Founders who’ve experienced the problem they’re solving tell better stories. Personal connection beats market research every single time.

Words That Kill Your Deck

“Platform” is poison. I removed it from at least 10 decks this year. Just tell me what the thing actually does.

“AI” is a feature, not a business. In Q1 2025, slapping “AI” on a slide worked. Now? It’s noise. Tell me what problem you solve, not what tech stack you use.

“Uber for X” needs to die. It’s almost 2026. Come up with your own category.

Traction Without Context Is Useless

“10K users” means nothing. “10K users, 23% MoM growth, $47 ARPU” means something.

Don’t just show a graph going up. Label the axes. Explain the spike. Context turns data into a story.

The Market Size Slide Is Usually Bullshit

TAM/SAM/SOM with numbers pulled from Statista doesn’t impress anyone. Show me YOUR math based on YOUR customer segments.

And please—if you claim your Total Addressable Market is “The Global Internet,” you don’t know who your customer is. Niche down.

Financial Projections Reveal How You Think

Projections are fiction, but they show whether you understand your business. Show you grasp unit economics, and investors will forgive aggressive growth assumptions. Show hockey sticks with no underlying logic, and they’ll assume you don’t know what you’re doing.

The “Conservative Estimate” lie: We all know your Year 5 projection of $100M ARR is fake. Focus on how you get the first $1M instead.

The Team Slide Should Answer “Why You, Why Now”

Your advisor’s LinkedIn profile doesn’t matter. Your 10 years of solving this exact problem do.

Be Specific About What the Money Gets You

Asking for money without showing milestones is amateur. “$2M for hiring and marketing” isn’t a plan. “$2M gets us to $100K MRR and 18-month runway” is.

The fundraising story matters as much as the business story: Why this round? Why this amount? Why now? If you can’t articulate it clearly, investors smell desperation.

The One Insight Test

Every deck should answer: What’s the insight only you have? If I could’ve thought of your idea without domain expertise, it wouldn’t be compelling enough.

Features vs. Benefits

Founders constantly confuse these. “AI-powered matching algorithm” doesn’t mean shit to anyone. “Cuts hiring time from 60 days to 12.

Design and Formatting Rules That Actually Matter

Design matters less than founders think, but more than they act. Your deck doesn’t need to be gorgeous, but it can’t look like you don’t give a shit.

One idea per slide. Stop cramming Problem, Solution, and Market Size onto one slide to “save space.” It looks like chaos.

Font size 10 is illegal. If an investor has to squint to read your LTV/CAC ratio on a mobile screen, they’re closing the file.

Bullet points are boring. Use icons, charts, and big numbers. Walls of text are for legal contracts, not pitch decks.

Consistency signals competence. If your headers jump around and your colours shift, investors subconsciously think your code is messy too.

PDF is the only format. Don’t send Keynote or PPT. Fonts break. Layouts shift. Send a PDF.

Slide-Specific Advice

Slide 1 (Cover): Nobody reads it. They glance for 3 seconds. If your tagline is a paragraph, you’ve already lost.

Competition slide: This is about positioning. Everyone knows you can’t compete with Google or OpenAI head-to-head. Show how you dominate a specific niche. The X-Y landscape format works great—choose the right axes.

“Why Now”: Don’t make this its own slide. Weave it naturally into your problem (it’s urgent), market (it’s shifting), and competition (giants are slow). When isolated, it feels forced.

Exit Strategy: Skip it. You haven’t sold one unit yet. Don’t tell me about your IPO plans.

The Appendix: This is your best friend. Keep the main deck focused and story-driven. Put technical deep dives in the appendix.

What Actually Matters

Slide count doesn’t matter. Based on my experience and Carta’s insights, there’s no correlation between slide number and fundraising success. If a slide is meaningful, keep it. If it’s just “nice to have,” remove it.

Frameworks kill the story. Most founders try to force famous frameworks into their decks. But those frameworks make you sound generic. Create your own narrative instead.

Clarity beats cleverness every single time. The decks that got funded weren’t perfect, but they were clear.

The best pitch decks don’t follow a template. They tell a story only that founder can tell, backed by data that proves they understand their business. Everything else is just noise.

 

If you need assistance with developing your business pitch, why not get in touch today?