Quillstack Series A

SaaS pitch deck example with the metrics investors ask for

Quillstack sells document control software to mid-sized accounting firms and is raising $4M. The deck spends four of its twelve slides on numbers, because a SaaS investor decides on retention and payback before they care about the story, and every one of those numbers is on a slide you can scroll below.

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SERIES A

Quillstack

Document control for accounting firms

Mara Whitfield

Co-founder and CEO, Quillstack

Date

September 2026

Slide 1 · cover · Names the company, the niche and the round so the first slide reads like a filing, not a poster.

WHY NOW

Every audit file still lives in six places.

Sign-off by email

41% of mid-sized firms still collect client sign-off in plain email threads.

Tool sprawl

The average engagement touches 3.2 separate tools before a file is closed.

Scrutiny rising

Regulator file reviews keep tightening while 220,000 mid-sized firms run on shared drives.

02

Slide 2 · intro · One claim carries the problem, and three named shifts explain why the fix sells now rather than five years ago.

The product

Four pieces that replace the six places an audit file lives today.

01
Version lock

One working copy per file. Every prior version is kept, timestamped and read only, so nobody audits the wrong draft.

02
Client portal

Clients upload, review and approve in one place. No attachments, no chasing, and every request has a due date.

03
Audit trail

Every open, edit and approval is logged per engagement and exportable when a reviewer or regulator asks.

04
E-sign

Representation letters and engagement letters are signed inside the file they belong to, not in a separate tool.

03

Slide 3 · pillars · The product in four numbered tiles, so the demo can be skipped without losing what Quillstack actually does.

ARR by quarter

From $310k to $2.05M in seven quarters, sold firm by firm with no paid acquisition until 2026.

Q1 25
Q2 25
Q3 25
Q4 25
Q1 26
Q2 26
Q3 26
0$k550$k1100$k1650$k2200$k
ARR

04

Slide 4 · metrics · ARR by quarter, seven points on one line. The slide investors photograph, placed before the market slide on purpose.

METRICS

The numbers behind the curve

Metric
Now
12 months ago
Benchmark
Net revenue retention
118%
104%
110%
Gross margin
81%
74%
75%
CAC payback
14 months
22 months
18 months
Logo churn
1.1% per month
2.4% per month
1.5% per month
Paid firms
214
89
n/a
Benchmarks are the median for B2B SaaS at this ARR band, not a target we set.

05

Slide 5 · metrics · The scorecard puts now beside 12 months ago and a benchmark, so 118% NRR reads as a trend, not a claim.
TAMSAMSOM

Market size

Sized bottom up from 220,000 mid-sized firms across five English speaking markets.

TAM, total market

All document and engagement software spend by accounting firms worldwide.

SAM, serviceable

Mid-sized firms in the five markets our product and support already cover.

SOM, obtainable

The share reachable in three years at the current win rate and sales capacity.

100%

$6.1B

Document software, all firms

23%

$1.4B

Mid-sized firms, five markets

2%

$140M

Three year obtainable share

06

Slide 6 · diagram · TAM to SOM in three rings, each ring defined in one line so the $140M target is checkable arithmetic.

COMPETITION

How we compare

Option
Per seat
Client portal
Audit trail
E-sign
Quillstack
$49
Built in
Every action
Included
Generic DMS
$38
None
Partial
Add on
Practice suites
$120
Limited
Yes
Extra module
Email and drive
$0
None
None
None
Prices are list, per seat per month, read from public pricing pages in August 2026.

07

Slide 7 · comparison · Four options a firm actually weighs, priced per seat, with Quillstack in the first row rather than a biased last word.

How firms adopt

Last 12 months, webinar to firm-wide rollout, with the conversion at each step.

Webinar

1,800 attendees

Monthly technical webinars on audit file management draw partners, not juniors.

Trial

640 trials, 36%

A trial imports one live engagement, so the firm tests on its own messy file.

Paid

190 firms, 30%

Firms start on one team. Median first purchase is 11 seats on the Practice plan.

Rollout

38 firm-wide, 20%

Firm-wide rollouts follow the first busy season, and drive most of the 118% NRR.

08

Slide 8 · process · The acquisition funnel with real counts and the conversion rate at every step, from webinar to firm-wide rollout.

Pricing

Practice is where 70% of customers land, and where retention is highest.

Team

For one audit team

$49

per seat/month

Version lock and portal

Engagement audit trail

25 GB per engagement

Email support

Start trial

Practice

Where 70% of firms land

$79

per seat/month

Everything in Team

E-sign included

Quality review workflow

Priority support

Start trial

Enterprise

For 100 seat firms and up

Custom

quoted

SSO and SCIM

Data residency options

Sandbox tenant

Named account manager

Talk to sales

09

Slide 9 · pricing · Three tiers with the recommendation said in the copy, because pricing is the business model in SaaS.

Founders and advisors

Mara Whitfield, CEO

Co-founder. Eleven years as an audit manager at a mid-tier firm, where she ran document control for 40 engagement teams.

Dev Chandra, CTO

Co-founder. Built the sync engine at a document management vendor before leaving to start Quillstack in 2024.

Audit advisor

A former national quality partner chairs the product council and reviews every change to the audit trail spec.

Growth advisor

A SaaS operator who took a compliance product from $1M to $20M ARR advises on pricing and the enterprise motion.

10

Slide 10 · checklist · Two founders and two advisors as text cards. Who they are matters here; what they look like does not.

THE ASK

Use of funds

$4M

to reach $6M ARR by Q4 2027

Category
Amount
%
Purpose
Engineering
$1.68M
42%
Practice suite integrations and the reviewer workspace
Sales
$1.32M
33%
Six reps and the first two channel partnerships
Customer success
$600k
15%
Busy season onboarding for firm-wide rollouts
Working capital
$400k
10%
Buffer to hold 20 months of runway at plan
Percentages are of the $4M raise and exclude the $1.1M already on the balance sheet.

11

Slide 11 · investment · The $4M ask as an auditable table that ends on one milestone the round is sized to reach.

Talk to us

We will share the data room and a sandbox tenant after a first call.

Email

hello@quillstack.example

Website

quillstack.example

Social

@quillstack

12

Slide 12 · closing · Three contact rows and a plain offer of the data room. Nothing else belongs on the last slide.

The structure

What each slide is doing, so you can reuse the order even with different content.

Slide 1cover
Names the company, the niche and the round so the first slide reads like a filing, not a poster.
Slide 2intro
One claim carries the problem, and three named shifts explain why the fix sells now rather than five years ago.
Slide 3pillars
The product in four numbered tiles, so the demo can be skipped without losing what Quillstack actually does.
Slide 4metrics
ARR by quarter, seven points on one line. The slide investors photograph, placed before the market slide on purpose.
Slide 5metrics
The scorecard puts now beside 12 months ago and a benchmark, so 118% NRR reads as a trend, not a claim.
Slide 6diagram
TAM to SOM in three rings, each ring defined in one line so the $140M target is checkable arithmetic.
Slide 7comparison
Four options a firm actually weighs, priced per seat, with Quillstack in the first row rather than a biased last word.
Slide 8process
The acquisition funnel with real counts and the conversion rate at every step, from webinar to firm-wide rollout.
Slide 9pricing
Three tiers with the recommendation said in the copy, because pricing is the business model in SaaS.
Slide 10checklist
Two founders and two advisors as text cards. Who they are matters here; what they look like does not.
Slide 11investment
The $4M ask as an auditable table that ends on one milestone the round is sized to reach.
Slide 12closing
Three contact rows and a plain offer of the data room. Nothing else belongs on the last slide.

How to adapt this deck

Swap Quillstack’s numbers for yours and keep the order: claim, product, ARR, scorecard, market, competition, funnel, pricing, team, ask. At seed, the scorecard shrinks to whatever you can measure honestly and the benchmark column does more work than the history column. At Series A, the 12 months ago column is the slide. If a metric embarrasses you, keep the row and add the fix to the use of funds; deleting rows is the one edit investors notice.

Which pitch deck do you need?

This page is the SaaS entry in a set of industry decks. The investor pitch deck example is the general purpose hub, the seed and Series A examples are organised by round rather than industry, and the Series B example shows what replaces the problem slide once the machine is proven. If your revenue is transactional rather than recurring, the fintech and marketplace examples swap ARR for volume, take rate and liquidity.

What makes this deck work

ARR is slide four, before the market

The revenue line, seven quarters from $310k to $2.05M, arrives before TAM and SAM do. A SaaS investor reads trajectory first, and a deck that opens its numbers early signals it has numbers worth opening. The market sizing on slide six then explains headroom rather than substituting for traction.

The scorecard shows 12 months ago

Slide five puts every headline metric beside its own value a year earlier and a benchmark: NRR 118% against 104%, CAC payback 14 months against 22, churn 1.1% against 2.4%. Shown as a trend with a reference column, 118% reads as compounding improvement instead of a cherry picked claim.

The ask is sized to one milestone

The use of funds table on slide eleven allocates the $4M across four rows that sum to 100%, and the hero caption commits to a single outcome: $6M ARR by Q4 2027. An ask tied to a named milestone invites the investor to test the arithmetic, which is exactly the conversation a Series A founder wants.

Questions people ask

What goes in a SaaS pitch deck?

This example runs cover, why now, product, ARR, metrics scorecard, market size, competition, adoption funnel, pricing, team, use of funds and contact, in that order. The distinctive SaaS choices are two dedicated metrics slides and a pricing slide, because in software the pricing model is the business model.

Which SaaS metrics do investors expect to see?

ARR and its growth curve, net revenue retention, gross margin, CAC payback and churn. This deck shows each beside a benchmark: NRR 118% against a 110% benchmark, gross margin 81% against 75%, payback 14 months against 18. If a number is below benchmark, show it anyway and explain the plan.

How is a SaaS deck different from a generic investor deck?

Two metrics slides instead of one, pricing as a full slide, and a funnel with measured conversion rates rather than a go to market diagram. Quillstack shows webinar to trial at 36%, trial to paid at 30% and paid to firm-wide rollout at 20%, so the growth model is checkable at every step.

Should I show pricing in a pitch deck?

For SaaS, yes. Pricing tiers are how an investor models expansion revenue and average contract value. This deck names Practice as the tier 70% of customers land on in the slide copy itself, because the product deliberately has no highlighted plan flag, and the claim belongs where it can be read.

How many slides should a SaaS pitch deck have?

Ten to twelve. This one is twelve. For a five minute slot, cut to eight by dropping the competition table, the pricing slide, the team slide and the contact slide: the ARR curve, scorecard, funnel and ask carry a short pitch on their own.

Can I export this deck to PowerPoint with the charts still editable?

Yes. The editable PPTX export maps nine of the ten chart kinds, including this deck’s line chart, to native PowerPoint charts you can retype numbers into. Tables and text stay native too. Only the waffle chart kind stays a picture, and this deck does not use one.

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Sources

Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .