Pitch deck slides

There is no sacred order, but the Sequoia / YC pattern works because it matches how partners decide. Use roughly 10–14 slides. A partner who sees dozens of decks a week will spend roughly two minutes unless something hooks them.

The big idea

Each slide answers one question. If it answers two, split it. Write this 60-second spine first, then one slide per sentence:

1. We help [buyer] do [job] without [pain].
2. We do it by [product / insight].
3. Evidence: [metric path].
4. Market: [bottom-up path to large revenue].
5. We're raising $X to hit [milestone] in ~18 months.

Walking through the jobs

Lead the title with what, not why or how. "Stripe for vertical SaaS invoicing" beats "Reimagining the future of work." State the problem in the buyer's language: a person ("VP Eng at a 200-person SaaS company") and a cost. Michael Seibel's rule: two sentences for what the company does, then a concrete example.

Why now needs a mechanism: a 10× cost drop, a platform shift, a regulation change, or a new channel. "AI is hot" without a change in your economics is not a catalyst.

Market: bottom-up when you can — reachable customers × annual spend × realistic share. Top-down TAM is context only. See market sizing.

Traction often decides whether the rest gets read. Plot a time series of the metric that predicts the business: MRR from $8k → $42k over nine months with a churn note beats "100k users."

Competition should name real alternatives — including "do nothing" and "hire an intern" — and state your wedge in one sentence. The ask names the raise, runway (usually 12–18 months), and milestones: "We're raising $3M to reach $1.5M ARR and hire 4 engineers + 2 AEs."

Common mistakes

• Mystery-meat one-liner. If the title needs a follow-up email, rewrite it.
• Problem without a buyer. "People waste time" is not a market.
• Vanity traction. Downloads and waitlists without retention or revenue.
• Fake competition slide. Empty quadrant, you in the top-right.
• Ask without milestones.

Check yourself

A partner has two minutes. Which three slides do they often read first?

Title, maybe slide two, and the ask — one-liner and the raise have to work without narration.

Bottom-up: 40,000 customers × $12k × 5% share. What ARR is that?

$24M.

Key takeaways

• Standard order: problem → solution → why now → market → product → traction → model → competition → team → ask.
• Traction should match stage; show a time series of the metric that predicts the business.
• Bottom-up market math beats a giant TAM.
• The ask needs dollars, runway and milestones.

Further learning

YC Library: How to build your seed round pitch deckY Combinator has helped thousands of founders create pitch decks for their seed round fundraising. Here is the YC seed deck template that works.YC Startup Library

Michael Seibel on concise seed pitches:

Next: seed vs Series A decks.