mkurman/pitch-deck

----|---------|-----------------| | 1 | Title / Hook | Company name, one-liner, and a memorable hook stat or image | Burying the one-liner; using a generic tagline | | 2 | Problem | Make the pain visceral and specific to your ICP | Being too abstract; citing a problem everyone already knows | | 3 | Solution | Show what you built and how it eliminates the pain | Feature-dumping; not connecting back to the problem | | 4 | Demo / Product | Screenshot, GIF, or live product walkthrough | Showing the admin panel instead of the user-facing magic | | 5 | Market Size | TAM/SAM/SOM with a credible bottoms-up calculation | Using only top-down "the market is $X trillion" numbers | | 6 | Business Model | How you make money, unit economics, pricing | Not showing actual or projected unit economics | | 7 | Traction | The chart that goes up and to the right | Vanity metrics; hiding the Y-axis; mixing timeframes | | 8 | Competition | Why you win — positioning matrix or comparison table | Claiming "no competitors"; using a 2x2 where you magically own the top-right | | 9 | Team | Founders + key hires, relevant backgrounds | Listing every employee; not explaining founder-market fit | | 10 | Go-to-Market | How you acquire customers today and at scale | Saying "we'll go viral" without a concrete channel strategy | | 11 | Financials / Ask | How much you're raising, use of funds, key projections | Not specifying what milestones the money unlocks | | 12 | Closing / Vision | The big dream — where this goes in 5-10 years | Being too conservative; forgetting contact info |

Narrative Arc Rules

• Slide 1-3: Establish tension. The audience should feel the problem before you show the answer.
• Slide 4-7: Build credibility. Prove you have a real product with real traction in a real market.
• Slide 8-10: Prove defensibility. Show you can win against alternatives and scale.
• Slide 11-12: Make the ask and paint the vision. End with ambition, not logistics.

Stage-Specific Guidance

• Pre-seed / Seed: Emphasize problem depth, founder-market fit, and early signals (waitlist, LOIs, design partners). Financial projections can be lighter.
• Series A: Emphasize repeatable go-to-market, unit economics, and a clear path from current traction to 3-5x growth. Investors expect real revenue data.

Principles

• Every slide title should be an assertion, not a label. "We grew 30% MoM for 6 months" beats "Traction".
• Remove any slide that does not advance the narrative. If you cannot articulate why a slide exists, cut it.
• The deck should be understandable by a partner who reads it at 11pm on their iPad without you presenting.
• Use no more than 3 fonts and 2 brand colors. Clutter kills credibility.
• Data beats adjectives. Replace "fast-growing" with "3x YoY".

Related Skills

• investor-research — use before building the deck to tailor the narrative to specific investor interests
• data-room — prepare the backup materials investors will request after seeing the deck
• fundraising-email — write the outreach email that accompanies the deck

Examples

Example prompt: "Help me build a seed deck. We're raising $3M for an AI-powered contract review tool for mid-market legal teams. We have $40K MRR and 12 paying customers."

Good output snippet (Problem slide):

> ### Slide 2: Problem > Title: Mid-market legal teams review 500+ contracts/month with 1990s tools > Key message: Contract review is the #1 time sink for legal teams at companies with 200-2,000 employees, costing $180K+/year in paralegal hours per company. > Content: > - 73% of mid-market companies still use manual redlining in Word > - Average contract review takes 45 minutes; 30 minutes is repetitive clause checking > - Errors in reviewed contracts cost companies 2-5% of deal value annually > Visual suggestion: Side-by-side showing a paralegal buried in Word docs vs. your product highlighting risks in seconds > Investor question this answers: Is this a real, painful, expensive problem?

Example prompt: "Review my existing deck — I keep getting passed on after the first meeting."

Good output approach: Read the deck, identify which of the 12 slides are missing or weak, check if the narrative arc has tension, and test every slide against the investor-question framework. Deliver specific rewrites, not vague advice.