Presentations · Glossary
What is a pitch deck?
A pitch deck is a short slide presentation that makes the case for a business to someone who can fund it or buy from it. For investors it covers the problem, the solution, the market, traction, the business model, the competition, the team and the amount being raised. It aims to win the next meeting, not to answer every question.
A pitch deck is a sales document whose product is the company itself. It is judged in minutes, often without the founder in the room, and the ones that work are built for that reader.
Nuwan Madhusanka · Co-founder
5 min read · Published
| Pitch deck | Business plan | One pager | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Format | 10 to 20 slides | A written document, often 20 pages or more | A single page |
| Purpose | Win a meeting or a decision | Plan and justify operations in detail | Earn a first look |
| Reader | Investors, partners, big customers | Lenders, grant bodies, the founding team | Busy investors scanning many companies |
| Numbers | Headline metrics and the ask | Full projections and assumptions | Three to six key figures |
| Read time | A few minutes | Hours | One to two minutes |
The argument in slides
Investors see far more companies than they can fund, so the deck's job is narrow: make one company clear, credible and worth a conversation. Sequoia Capital's published guide to pitching lists the parts it wants to see: company purpose in one declarative sentence, the problem, the solution, why now, market potential, competition and alternatives, business model, team, financials and vision. Y Combinator's seed deck template, written by Aaron Harris, runs title, problem, solution, traction, insight, business model, market, team and the ask, and tells founders to strive for clarity and concision. The two lists agree far more than they differ, which is itself useful: investors are checking the same handful of questions in roughly the same order.
Pitch deck against business plan
A business plan is written to plan and justify how a company will operate: detailed market analysis, operations, hiring, full financial projections with every assumption. It is read slowly by lenders, grant bodies and the founders themselves. A pitch deck is a compressed argument read quickly by people deciding whether to spend an hour on you. Seed investors rarely ask for a full plan, and Y Combinator's seed fundraising guide warns founders not to spend too much time developing diligence documents at that stage. The plan's thinking still matters, because the deck's numbers have to survive questions, but the plan itself stays in the drawer until someone asks.
Two decks, not one
Most founders end up with two versions. The presented deck is sparse, built to support a founder speaking, with large numbers and few words. The send ahead deck is read alone, often forwarded to partners who never meet the founder, so it carries slightly more text and a headline on each slide that states the point. Geoff Ralston's guide for Y Combinator describes the deck as something investors may keep as a leave behind to show other partners, which is exactly the version that has to work without narration.
Common mistakes
The most common is leading with the product before the problem has been made to hurt, so the solution arrives as a feature tour. The second is a market slide built from a global industry figure rather than the customers the company can actually reach. The third is hiding the weak part, whether churn, a small team or a competitor, which investors find anyway and then distrust everything else. The fourth is an ask with no statement of what the money buys. The fifth is design that fights legibility: YC partner Kevin Hale's rule for demo day slides is to make them legible, simple and obvious.
Pitch decks for customers and partners
The term also covers decks that pitch a deal rather than an investment: a partnership proposal to a larger company, a pitch to a council for a site, a sponsor pitch for an event. The structure shifts toward the other party's situation, what they gain and what the first step is, but the principle holds. One clear claim, evidence the reader can check, and a specific request. A customer pitch deck usually drops the fundraising slides altogether and replaces market size with the customer's own numbers: what the current process costs them, what changes, how quickly and at what price. The team slide shrinks to the people the customer will actually work with, and the ask becomes a pilot, a trial period or a signed order with a date on it.
Where it shows up in the product
The presentation generator builds a pitch deck from a written brief, choosing a sequence of slide roles such as intro, metrics, comparison, pricing and investment, then a template for each. The investment role exists specifically for the ask and its use of funds. Research is limited to one web search and up to two fetched pages per deck and grounds the content, but sources are never printed on the slides, and the writer fills in specifics where a brief is thin, so give it your real numbers and check every figure. There is no regenerate button; a single slide is redone by asking the AI assistant. The pitch deck examples on this site show complete decks slide by slide.
Questions people ask
What slides does a pitch deck need?
The core set is problem, solution, market, traction, business model, competition, team and the ask, usually with a cover, a why now slide and a close. Sequoia and Y Combinator publish lists that differ only in emphasis. The order can change with the company's strengths, but leaving one out invites the question you were hoping to avoid.
Is a pitch deck the same as an investor deck?
Mostly. Investor deck usually means a pitch deck aimed at fundraising, and people use the terms interchangeably. Pitch deck is the broader word, since it also covers decks that pitch a partnership, a large customer or a grant panel, where traction and the ask are framed as benefits to the other party.
Do investors still read business plans?
At seed and Series A, rarely. They read the deck, meet the founders and then ask for specific diligence material such as financial models, cohort data and contracts. Banks, grant bodies and some angel groups still expect a written plan. Writing one remains a good way to test the deck's numbers before anyone else does.
How long does an investor spend on a deck?
Only a few minutes on a first read, which is why each slide needs a headline that states its point. If an investor cannot tell what the company does from the cover and the next two slides, the rest may never be read. Detail belongs in an appendix or a data room.
Can I generate a pitch deck and edit it afterwards?
Yes. The deck opens in the builder once generated, where every slide can be edited, swapped to another template of the same role, reordered or deleted, and the AI assistant can make changes that you preview before applying. Save before sharing, since the share link and exports always use the last saved version.
Make one with presentations
The button opens the generator with this use case already described. Change the wording to match your own.
Create a presentation with OneCraftRelated questions
- What is a teaser deck?A teaser deck is a 3 to 5 slide version of a pitch sent cold to earn a meeting. What it keeps, what it leaves out, and when to send the full deck instead.
- What is the 10 20 30 rule?Guy Kawasaki's 10 20 30 rule: ten slides, twenty minutes, no font smaller than thirty points. His ten slides mapped against a real seed deck and slide roles.
- How many slides in a pitch deck?Ten to fifteen for a first meeting, and the count matters less than which slides. What has to be there, what belongs in an appendix, and why.
- One pager vs pitch deck: when to send whichA one pager puts a company's facts on a single page; a pitch deck tells its story over ten or more slides. Which to send, to whom, and at what stage.
Step by step in the builder: Make a pitch presentation with AI.
Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .