What numbers to put in a pitch deck, from 21 decks

Pitch decks agree on far fewer numbers than advice lists suggest. Counted on 13 September 2026 across the 21 pitch and fundraising decks on this site, only five numbers appear in more than four out of five decks: the amount being raised (20 decks), the price the company charges (19), how the money will be spent (18), a customer or account count (17) and the milestone the round is meant to reach (17). Revenue appears in 13, and valuation in just 5.

How the 21 decks were read

This site holds 54 finished example decks, and 21 of them exist to raise money: pre-seed, angel, seed, Series A and Series B decks, sector pitch decks for SaaS, fintech, hardware, marketplaces, healthtech, edtech, climate and ecommerce companies, plus an accelerator application, a crowdfunding raise, a demo day deck, a restaurant investor deck, an investment memo and a charity appeal. Every company in them is fictional.

Each deck was read in full, slide by slide, and every number on it was sorted into one of 17 metrics. The rule was strict: a metric counts only when a slide states it as a number. A slide that says “customers love it” does not count as a customer metric; a slide that says “3,100 active subscribers” does. A deck counts once per metric however many times it repeats the number. Keyword searches were used first to find candidates and every match was then checked by reading the slide, because a phrase like “growth fund” or “go to market” matches a search and is not a metric.

The count describes what these example decks contain. It is not a survey of decks investors receive, and the corpus will grow as decks are added.

The numbers most decks show

The table below this article lists all 17 metrics with how many decks show each. The top of the table is about the deal and the business model rather than performance.

The raise is close to universal. Twenty decks state an amount, and the one that does not is the accelerator application, which asks for a programme place rather than money. Eighteen split that amount into lines, and 17 name a milestone it reaches: sixty paying clinics, 12,000 subscribers, $6M of recurring revenue by a named quarter. An amount without a milestone asks an investor to guess what they are buying.

The price is nearly as common. Nineteen decks state what a customer pays, per student, per truck, per seat, per device or per bottle. That stands out, because pricing is often left off decks as a detail. Here it is the number that makes every other number checkable: 3,100 subscribers means little until you know each pays $29 a month.

Customer counts appear in 17. The seed pitch deck gives 3,100 active subscribers on its fourth slide, beside $1.08M of annualised revenue and 16% average month on month growth.

What changes by stage

Splitting the decks by stage shows which numbers arrive with maturity.

Unit economics is the clearest step. Only two of the six seed stage decks show them, while seven of the nine Series A and B decks do: CAC payback, contribution per order or invoice, take rate. Retention follows the same pattern, two of six against six of nine. By Series A an investor is buying a repeatable machine, and the decks show the machine’s parts.

Runway goes the other way. Five of the six seed stage decks state runway or a path to profitability, often as months: 18 months, 20 months, 24 months. Only three of the nine later decks do, and the Series A deck states its operating loss and cash at year end in a financial table rather than as runway.

Valuation is the most striking absence. No Series A or B deck here shows one. The five decks that do show round terms are an angel round, a crowdfunding raise, a pre-seed SAFE, a restaurant raise and an investment memo, where the terms are part of the offer being made to a wide or informal audience.

Before revenue, decks substitute evidence. The pre-seed pitch deck has no revenue line; it has three design partners, 142 clinics on a waiting list, a $390 monthly price and a bottom up market of $21M across its first regions.

Where each number sits in the deck

Position follows a consistent logic. Twelve of the 13 decks that report revenue state it by slide five, four of them on slide two, and the thirteenth on slide six, so an investor meets the evidence before the story. The demo day deck makes its second slide a single figure, $148K of monthly recurring revenue, up 34% a month.

Market size sits in the middle, anywhere from slide two to slide nine, and usually after the product has been explained. The amount being raised sits at the end, on the ask slide that is either the last or second to last slide, with the use of funds table and the milestone beside it. Six decks also put the amount on the cover, which works when the round is the headline: an angel round, a crowdfunding offer, a pre-seed SAFE.

Margin, retention and unit economics cluster together on metrics slides in the first half. The SaaS pitch deck puts net revenue retention, gross margin, CAC payback and logo churn on one table on slide five, each with its value twelve months ago and a benchmark, which lets a reader judge the trend and the level at once.

The numbers that rarely appear

Forecasts are rare. Only five decks show a multi-year forecast or scenarios, and three of those are an angel deck, a restaurant raise and an investment memo. Most decks let the milestone do the work of a forecast: one target number the round reaches, rather than a five year curve.

Growth rates are also less common than expected, in 7 of 21 decks. Most decks show growth as a chart and leave the rate implicit, which Y Combinator’s design advice argues against: write the rate on the chart so the viewer does not have to work it out.

Customer outcomes, the measured result a customer gets, appear in 7: a reading age gain, empty miles down 4.8 points, 14% less fertiliser. They are the numbers a decision maker at the customer would care about, and they make the price look small.

Volume figures sit in a similar place. Six decks show usage or transaction volume: funded invoices, gross merchandise value, payment volume through the platform, seed sold per year, reading sessions a month and contracted energy savings. Volume is the right headline for a marketplace or a payments company, where revenue is a thin slice of what moves, but it needs the take rate beside it or the number flatters.

A metric checklist for your own deck

Use the counts as a floor rather than a formula. Every deck should state the amount, what it buys line by line, the milestone it reaches, the price and how many customers pay it. Add revenue as soon as you have it, placed early. Add a bottom up market size. Add runway if you are raising at seed. From Series A, add retention, gross margin and one unit economics measure, and write the growth rate on the chart.

For the definitions behind those measures, Andreessen Horowitz’s list of startup metrics separates bookings from revenue and paid from blended CAC, which are the distinctions investors check first.

How to use this

Put each number where it proves a claim, one claim per slide. The chart slides page explains the ten chart kinds available for a traction or cohort slide, and the guide to adding charts, maps and diagrams to slides shows how to add one and edit its data. For how the numbers should look once they are on a slide, read how to present data in a presentation, and for the short answer on length see how many slides a pitch deck should have.