The slides, in order
Investors often read a pre-seed deck before they meet you, so the order matters as much as the content. This is the order I start from, based on the Y Combinator seed deck template and adjusted for each company.
- Title. Your company name and one line on what you do.
- Problem. Who has it and what it costs them.
- Solution. What you do, in plain words.
- Early proof. Users, pilots, a waitlist or revenue, whatever you have.
- Insight. What you understand that others miss.
- Business model. How you will make money.
- Market. How big this can get.
- Team. Why these founders fit this problem.
- The ask. How much you need and what it gets you.
Where pre-seed decks go wrong
The usual problem is a deck that explains everything and argues nothing, with 10 slides of features, a vague problem and the ask hidden at the end.
Clarity beats detail at this stage. Y Combinator's guide makes the same point, that most seed stage companies have little meaningful detail to explore, and decks that pretend otherwise get muddled.
How I built the Earworm deck
Earworm is a Bristol video podcast agency, and its deck had to fit a wide business into a few slides. I restructured the content around one investment story, from the proposition to the growth opportunity, then built a visual system to carry it. The deck also reframed the story around their SaaS product, PodPlanner.
You can see the slides in the Earworm investor deck case.
Design that helps the pitch
Kevin Hale's advice to YC founders sums up the design side. Slides should be legible, simple and obvious, which in practice means big type, one idea per slide and charts that make their point without a legend.
For a quick test of your type and length, read the 10/20/30 rule. If you want a designer on it, my pitch deck design page shows how I work on decks.
