How to present financials in a pitch deck

To present financials in a pitch deck, show only the numbers your stage can prove, on one or two slides before the ask: revenue or its substitute with the trend, the unit economics that explain it, a short forecast with the assumption printed beside each line, and a use of funds that adds exactly to the amount raised. Draw a trend as a chart, draw anything an investor will check line by line as a table, and keep the full model in the data room.

Which financial numbers to show at each stage

The financial slides grow with the company. Sequoia’s business plan outline treats financials in five words, “If you have any, please include”, which is a fair summary of seed: an investor wants evidence, not a model. By Series A the example decks on this site carry a profit and loss summary or a line by line scorecard.

The table below this article lists the financial slides in seven example decks on this site, from pre-seed to Series A, and how each draws them. Three patterns stand out.

Before revenue, the price and the raise are the financials. The pre-seed pitch deck for Burrow, an invented veterinary software company, puts one price on the slide, $390 a clinic a month, so an investor can multiply it by the 142 clinics on its waiting list without being asked to.

At seed, unit economics arrive. The seed pitch deck example shows a $61 blended cost per subscriber, a 3.1 month payback and a 68% gross margin on cartridges, with a paragraph explaining where each comes from.

At Series A, the profit and loss arrives. The Series A deck example gives an eight line summary for two years: revenue from $4.1M to $7.9M, cost of revenue, gross profit, three operating cost lines, an operating loss of $5.3M and cash at year end of $3.1M, marked unaudited with the full statements in the data room.

Pick the chart for the claim

Every financial slide makes one claim, and the claim picks the drawing. Kevin Hale’s design advice for Y Combinator founders is to make each slide legible, simple and obvious, one idea per slide, and a financial slide is where that rule is hardest to keep.

Growth over time is a line or a column chart. The fintech pitch deck example on this site, for Tallyrail, an invented company that pays trade suppliers on invoice day, shows monthly funded volume from March to August as bars under a subtitle that states the finding: volume nearly tripled in six months, all from three trades.

Numbers that must be read together are hero figures. Tallyrail’s next slide prints three at the same size: a 1.9% take rate, $224k of net revenue for August and a 0.31% loss rate across 14 months. Putting the loss rate beside the revenue, rather than in an appendix, is the point of the slide.

Anything an investor will check line by line is a table. A profit and loss summary, a scorecard against a benchmark or a use of funds split all need exact values in rows. The SaaS pitch deck on this site sets net revenue retention, gross margin, CAC payback and logo churn beside their values twelve months ago and a benchmark, so each number reads as a trend rather than a claim.

A bridge from one total to another, such as opening to closing cash, is a waterfall. The post on presenting data in slides maps every chart kind to the claim it suits.

Put the assumptions beside the forecast

A forecast without its assumptions is a wish. The angel pitch deck example, for an invented oyster hatchery, forecasts revenue from $1.42M in FY26 to $7.1M in FY29 and writes the reason beside each line: set seed reaches $3.36M on 700 million seed at $4.80 a thousand and needs a second tank hall; larvae and services reach $1.90M and scale first because they need no tank space; licences reach $1.85M with six partners, up from two today. An investor can disagree with an assumption, which is a better conversation than disagreeing with a curve.

The Australian Investment Council’s business plan outline asks for the same discipline in more depth. It suggests a three to five year view, historical performance to give the forecast credibility, and scenario testing: what happens to profit and cash if sales fall 20 per cent, or supplier costs rise 30 per cent, or both. The scenarios belong in the model; the slide needs the base case and the assumption that moves it most.

Keep the forecast short at seed. Geoff Ralston’s seed fundraising guide in the Y Combinator library lists creating detailed financials among the things not to do with seed investors, and suggests giving a range for the raise with different growth scenarios depending on how much comes in.

Unit economics that reconcile

Unit economics are the financial slide investors test with a calculator, so make the arithmetic close. Tallyrail’s unit economics slide takes one $10,000 invoice apart: a $190 fee charged to the buyer, $58 cost of capital, $31 expected credit loss, $22 servicing, leaving $79 of contribution. The $190 fee is exactly 1.9% of the invoice, matching the take rate on the slide before.

The seed deck does the same with a subscriber. It contributes $19.72 a month after cost of goods, pays back the $61 acquisition cost in 3.1 months, and at a modelled 22 month life is worth $434. Each figure can be derived from the one before it, which is what makes them believable. The question page on use of funds slides shows the same reconciling habit applied to the ask.

Use of funds and the ask

The ask is a financial slide too, and it should add up to the cent. Aaron Harris’s seed deck template for Y Combinator says to tell the investor how much money you need and what it gets you, and that laying out where you will be inside a year is powerful. Ralston adds that the amount must be tied to a believable plan.

Tallyrail asks for $7M in four lines: $2.1M for risk and capital operations, $2.1M for engineering, $1.75M for sales into two new trades and $1.05M for regulatory and legal work, sized to grow funded volume four times while keeping losses under 0.5%. The Series A deck asks for $18M in four lines that total exactly, to reach $30M of recurring revenue and all fifty states within 24 months. The seed deck marks which of its four lines scales revenue directly.

State the milestone, the runway and whether the split excludes cash already held. The SaaS pitch deck’s caption says its percentages are of the $4M raise and exclude $1.1M already on the balance sheet, which answers the first question before anyone asks it.

What stays in the data room

The deck is the summary; the data room is the evidence. The Series A deck’s financial slide ends with a single line pointing to the full statements, the cohort detail and the cap table. Tallyrail’s closing slide offers its loan tape, credit policy and facility terms under NDA, because for a lending business the next meeting is a credit meeting.

The post counting the numbers in 21 example pitch decks shows which figures most decks carry and which almost none do, if you want to check your slide against the wider set.

Common mistakes

• A spreadsheet pasted onto a slide. Nobody reads forty cells from across a table.
• A hockey stick with no assumptions. The curve is not the argument; the reasons beside it are.
• Totals that do not add. A use of funds that misses the raise by $50K invites a hunt for other errors.
• Hiding the bad number. A missing loss rate or operating loss reads as a hidden one.
• No units or period. Say monthly or annual, actual or forecast, audited or not, on the slide.
• A raise with no milestone. An amount without an outcome asks the investor to guess what they are buying.

Build it

A chart here is a small grid of categories and series with ten render kinds, including line, stacked column and waterfall, and the page on chart slides explains them. A chart that comes with a layout offers only the three or four kinds that layout was designed for, while a chart dropped from the element library offers all ten. There are 31 metrics layouts and 7 investment layouts for the ask.

A table grows to 20 rows and 8 columns, every cell is left aligned, and an optional caption sits under it, which is the right place for “unaudited” or “excludes cash on hand”. When a deck is exported as an editable PowerPoint, 9 of the 10 chart kinds become native PowerPoint charts and the waffle stays a picture; PowerPoint and editable PowerPoint exports need a paid plan, while PDF is free. Research grounds what the generator writes, but sources are never printed on a slide, so add your own notes on where figures come from. The guide to adding charts, maps and diagrams to slides shows how to add a chart and type in your numbers.