Structuring a pitch deck that answers investors' questions
The order of the slides is not a convention: it follows the questions an investor asks, in the order they ask them.
An investor who opens your pitch deck is trying to answer a single question: does this file deserve a meeting? They usually spend little time on a first deck. Each slide must therefore answer a specific question, in the order in which it comes up — not in the order in which you would like to tell your story.
The questions, in order
What do you do?
The cover says in one sentence who you work for and what result you deliver, plus the amount you are looking for: the investor knows straight away whether the file fits their ticket.
Is the problem real?
Describe who suffers from it and what it costs them, with a source. A concrete example is more convincing than a general figure.
Does your solution solve it?
Show the product. Link each benefit to the problem on the previous slide.
Is the market big enough?
Prefer a bottom-up calculation (number of target customers × annual price) to a market research figure, and explain your method.
How do you make money?
Who pays, how much, how often, with what margin.
Do you have proof?
Traction is the slide investors look at most: customers, revenue, growth, retention, letters of intent.
Why you and not someone else?
Competition and team: what makes you hard to copy, and why your team is the right one.
How much, to do what?
Amount, use of funds, milestones the raise will help you reach, number of months of cash.
The most common mistakes
- Claiming you have no competitors: the status quo (a spreadsheet, a service provider, doing nothing) is always an alternative.
- A market calculated top-down: “1% of a multi-billion market” says nothing about your ability to sell.
- Figures without a time period: “200 customers” — since when, and how many of them pay?
- A funding need without milestones: the investor wants to know what their money will unlock.
- Too much text: one idea per slide; the detail goes in the notes or in an appendix.
A deck to send or a deck to present?
A deck sent by e-mail must make sense on its own: full sentences, sourced figures. A deck shown in a meeting can be more visual, since you talk it through. Many founders prepare both versions from the same 8-question outline above, adjusting only how much text they use.
These eight questions are the backbone; the style and the pace remain yours. Our 15-slide template follows them, with exactly what the investor is looking for in the notes of each slide.