Pitch deck structure

Read four pitch decks in a row and the thing you notice is not the design. It is that they all answer the same questions, in almost the same order, and the two that feel confusing are the two that answered a question nobody had asked yet. Structure is that, and only that: putting each answer where the question arrives.

One question per slide

Y Combinator’s rule for deck design is to express one idea per slide and make it obvious at a glance, on the grounds that an investor who does not get the point immediately “will check their email”. That is a design rule with a structural consequence. If a slide can only carry one idea, then the order of the slides is the order of your argument, and you cannot hide a weak link by putting two ideas on one page.

The practical test is to write the question above each slide before you write the slide. If two slides answer the same question, one of them is decoration. If a question has no slide, the reader will ask it out loud at the worst moment.

The default order

The table under this article is the twelve slide default: the question each slide answers and the role that renders it. The roles are the ones the builder ships, twenty six in all, and they matter here because choosing the role decides what the slide can hold before you write a word. A metrics slide takes numbers with labels and captions. A comparison takes two or more sides. A timeline takes dated periods. Picking the role first stops a comparison being built as a bullet list with arrows drawn on it.

Two of those choices are worth defending. The market slide is a pillars role rather than a chart, because a market is an argument about who exists and what they are worth, and a pie chart of a global figure is the fastest way to lose a room. The business model slide is a pricing role, because the concrete question is what one customer pays.

Problem-first versus traction-first

The default puts the problem at slide two. There is a second order that works, and the finished decks on this site use both.

Traction-first opens on the numbers. The Series A deck here does it: slide two is six numbers at the seed round beside the same six today, and the problem does not arrive until slide three. It works when the numbers are good enough to be the headline, and it fails badly when they are not, because you have led with your weakest material.

Problem-first is the safer default and the only sensible order before revenue. The pre-seed deck opens on the founders and then states the problem as four things that happen at a counter every day, which is a specific enough opening that the reader can picture it.

Sequoia’s guidance on presenting splits the difference. Lead with three slides covering what has changed, what you do, and the key business metrics, then use the first five minutes to establish why anyone should care. That is a compressed version of both orders at once.

Slides founders over-build: product and market size

Two slides get more work than they deserve.

The product slide grows because founders know the product best. Look at how the finished decks handle it: the seed deck describes the whole product in three parts, in the order a customer meets them. The Series A deck shows five hops the money makes and the four decisions the company owns along the way. Neither is a feature list, and neither takes more than one slide.

The market slide grows because a big number feels persuasive. Every stage deck here sizes from the bottom up instead. The accelerator deck builds its market from schools and a price. The angel deck sizes by the growers it can physically deliver to. The Series A deck counts firms rather than quoting a global software spend. A derived number survives the follow-up question and a quoted one usually does not.

The ask slide

The ask is the investment role, and it carries three things: the amount, the runway it buys and the milestone it reaches. The pre-seed deck states the amount, the runway and the three things the money buys. The seed deck ends on four things the money buys and the milestone it reaches. The Series A deck frames the ask as what the last round achieved and what this one buys, which is the version that works once there is a track record to point at.

A use of funds table belongs here, not in an appendix. It is the one table an investor reads in full.

The four stage decks compared

Put the four stage decks side by side and the shape is stable while the emphasis moves. The pre-seed deck is founders, problem, why now, solution, wedge, evidence, market, price, milestones, ask. The angel deck runs problem, solution, features, unit economics, market, competition, projections, people, plan, risks, terms. The seed deck goes problem, product, growth, churn, insight, unit economics, market, engine, people, ask. The Series A deck goes momentum, problem, solution, product, traction, market, alternatives, financials, team, ask, summary.

Read in that order you can watch the argument shift from people to numbers. The vision slide shrinks at every stage; the financial detail expands. The slide count itself barely moves, which is why the order is the thing worth arguing about.

The example

The seed pitch deck is eleven slides. It puts the growth curve at slide four, ahead of the market and the team, then spends slide five on churn by cohort, which is what a subscription business actually lives on. Slide six is an insight slide: the non-obvious thing the founders believe, with the two chart slides above it as the evidence.

If you are selling to buyers rather than investors, the order changes more than you would expect, and the sales deck structure is a different post. For the vocabulary of slide kinds and what each one can hold, the slide roles page lists all twenty six.