What is a teaser deck?

A deck built for the inbox

A teaser is read by someone who did not ask for it and owes you nothing, usually in a minute or two between other things. That reader decides one question: is this worth a conversation. So the teaser answers only what that decision needs. Visible, a platform that founders use for investor updates, publishes a teaser template of five slides: title, problem, solution, market and team. Other versions swap the team slide for a single traction slide when the numbers are the strongest argument. Either way the teaser has to stand entirely on its own, with a headline on each slide that states the point, because nobody will be there to explain it.

What the teaser leaves out, and why

The detail you leave out is not hidden, it is held back for the meeting where it can be discussed. Financial projections invite questions a slide cannot answer. A full competitive table invites an argument about one row. Use of funds matters only once someone is interested in funding. Leaving those out also protects the founder: a teaser is forwarded freely, while the full deck and diligence material can be shared once there is a relationship. Y Combinator's seed fundraising guide describes an executive summary and a deck that can be left behind for other partners, and the teaser is the stage before either.

How to cut a teaser from a full deck

Start from the finished pitch deck rather than writing from scratch, so the numbers match. Keep the cover, rewritten so its subtitle says what the company does in one sentence. Merge problem and solution if they fit on one slide. Choose the single strongest proof, whether revenue, growth, pilots or a signed customer, and give it a slide of its own. Add the market if it is part of the argument. End with the round size and a contact, not a thank you. Then read it as a stranger would, without the rest of the deck in your head, and cut anything that only makes sense with context.

Common mistakes

Sending the full deck and calling it a teaser is the most common. The second is a teaser so vague it could describe a hundred companies, with no number anywhere, which gives the reader no reason to reply. The third is inconsistency: a traction figure in the teaser that differs from the one in the deck sent a week later, which reads as carelessness at best. The fourth is heavy design that looks strong on a large screen and turns illegible as a phone preview in an email client. The fifth is forgetting the ask, so an interested reader does not know what the founder wants from them.

Teaser deck against one pager

The two overlap. A one pager puts the same essentials onto a single page, usually text and a few numbers, while a teaser uses a handful of slides with more room for one chart or image each. Some investors prefer the page because it is quicker to scan; others open slides more readily than a PDF of text. When in doubt, send whichever format the investor's own website or submission form asks for. Whichever you choose, keep the figures identical across both, and date them, so an investor who receives the teaser in March and the one pager from an introducer in April is not left reconciling two versions of the same company.

Where it shows up in the product

The generator's length slider runs from 3 to 20 slides and opens on 3, so a teaser is one of the few decks that needs little adjustment: set it to 3, 4 or 5, describe the company, and name the points you want covered. A share link sends the teaser as a read only viewer of the last saved version, with no password or expiry and speaker notes readable by anyone who presses N, so keep notes out of a teaser. The PDF export is free and suits email attachments, though its text cannot be selected. Building the full deck first and deleting slides keeps the two versions consistent.

Questions people ask