Creating Your Pitch Deck

Through an Annotated Example Author: Brendan Beh · brendan.bytein@gmail.com

⏱ Time indicators show how long to spend on each slide. They're a guide for pacing, not a strict recipe — know when to be punchy and when to go deep.

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Slide 1: Cover (~10s)

Your startup name And a catchy one-liner about what you do.

Think "a thousand songs in your pocket." Short, memorable, instantly communicates the value.

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Slide 2: The Problem (~25s)

___ sucks because of (your key insight).

Keep your problem statement targeted. Don't say "Research is difficult" — say "The average analyst spends X% of their time on this one tedious task."

The fact that others have tried and failed to solve this problem is a good thing — it means the problem is real. Your job is to identify the one element nobody else has noticed. That's how you actually solve it.

Examples:

• Linear didn't pitch "project management is broken" — they focused on the specific insight that devops tools were clunky and prioritised functionality over user-friendliness. (Series A led by Sequoia, 2020; US$35M Series B, 2023)
• Dropbox used a visual user journey to show just how painful the problem was. A picture says a thousand words.

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Slide 3: Your Solution (~20s)

We are (providing this key value) through our (brief product description).

Note: features ≠ value. Talking about how many features you have can actually signal you haven't found your key insight. Focus on the one thing that's missing everywhere else.

DO:

• Say "We reduce project management costs by 75% through our platform"
• Name a concrete, specific audience — a small market that loves you beats a large one that's lukewarm
• Use plain language: "website", "mobile app", "device" — not "holistic ecosystem enabler"

DON'T:

• Say "we are a holistic project management platform"
• Overuse buzzwords like "revolutionary" or "groundbreaking" — they signal vagueness
• Take more than one breath to say it — if you do, simplify

Examples:

• Ginkgo Bioworks (YC S14, US$290M Series E, 2019): "We program cells for our customers so they can develop new products." Clean, specific, value-led.
• Wise: Used a rule-of-three structure (Digital, Embedded, Instant) when a single line wasn't enough.
• Deel (YC W19, US$50M at US$12B, 2022): Cross-border payments improved by cutting out the middlemen.
• Rippling (US$200M Series F at US$13.5B, 2024): Key insight that employee data needs to be consolidated to identify follow-on effects across the entire employee experience.

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Slide 4: Product (~45s)

What you do and how you do it.

Show how the product works, or how a customer would use it. Can include your revenue model here too. If you can do a live demo, now is the time.

Keep it concise — by this point you've (hopefully) caught their attention, so you have a bit more runway. But don't overdo it — spending too long here wastes the goodwill you've built.

💡 A screenshot of your product says more than a paragraph of description.

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Slide 5: Revenue Model (~45s)

How you make money.

Cover: how much you charge, which revenue stream maps to which customer type, and why that price point makes sense for your clientele.

Examples:

• Shopify: A simple tiered pyramid diagram mapping price points to customer segments (Entrepreneurs → SMB → Enterprise). Digestible at a glance.
• Revolut: Built virality into the model — free tier encourages friends to sign up, driving mass-market B2C adoption.
• Wise: Revenue-share model for B2B partners — framed as no-loss, no-risk, which lowers onboarding friction.

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Slide 6: Competitive Differentiation (~45s)

How you're better than the competition.

Focus on value, not features. Having more features doesn't mean you have more value. If your differentiation is feature-based, make clear how that translates to a concrete customer benefit.

Classic formats:

• 2x2 matrix (Metric A vs. Metric B — you're top-right, they're not)
• Before/after screenshots (their clunky product vs. yours)

Examples:

• Reddit: Didn't list features — picked one metric (engagement) and showed definitively why no other ad platform could match it. Show, don't tell.
• Owlet (SPAC, 2021): Used revenue CAGR and EBITDA margin as a two-axis benchmark to position themselves as a financial outlier in their category.
• Ginkgo Bioworks: Used proprietary data assets (3.4B+ gene sequences) as a moat — but always tied back to what that means for customer value.
• Revolut: Even though a checkmark comparison table is usually weak, Revolut made it work by framing every row around a customer pain point, not a product feature.

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Slide 7: Traction (~25s)

Your customers love you — here's proof.

You need this slide regardless of stage. Pre-seed? Show validation experiment results. No validation at all? Do that before you pitch.

Examples:

• Coinbase: Transaction volume — a proxy for revenue when you charge a % fee
• Buffer: 97% margins, 55K users growing 40%/month
• DigitalOcean: Rising ARPU year-over-year — signals either happy customers paying more, or successful upselling

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Slide 8: Go-to-Market / Financials (~35s)

Two versions depending on your stage:

Early stage (MVP / pre-seed): Who are your key customers and exactly how will you reach them? The more specific the plan, the more credible you are. Focus on execution.

More established (revenue already flowing): Show charts for key financial metrics. Revenue is standard, but gross profit, paid users, or your core growth driver also works.

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Slide 9: Team (~25s)

Your team is awesome — prove it.

Name · Position · Key background highlights (one or two lines each)

The team can make or break the company. Investors are betting on execution as much as the idea. Show you have the right range of complementary skills to pull this off.

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Slide 10: Call to Action

Ask for what you need. That's it.

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Final Thoughts

Every pitch deck is ultimately answering one question:

Is there a lot of money in this solution — and can you execute?

Whatever combination of slides best tells that story is what you need. There's no single correct structure. TAM/SAM/SOM? Include it if it helps your story. Market timing slide? Same.

The only universal rule: keep things clear, concise, and convincing. Less is more.

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Reference Pitch Decks