Company name, one-line description, your name, and contact info. That's it.
Tip
Your one-liner should pass the "tell a friend" test - could someone repeat it from memory after hearing it once?
"Stripe - Payments infrastructure for the internet"
Define the pain point you're solving. Make it specific and relatable. Use a real customer story if you can.
Tip
The best problem slides make the investor feel the pain. Avoid abstract market commentary - ground it in a real person's experience.
"Sarah runs a 20-person startup. She spends 6 hours every month reconciling cap table changes in a spreadsheet that three people have conflicting versions of."
How your product solves the problem. Show the product - screenshots, a demo GIF, or a short walkthrough.
Tip
Lead with outcome, not features. "Founders close rounds 40% faster" hits harder than "AI-powered document automation platform."
Show a before/after: the messy spreadsheet vs. your clean dashboard.
The market shift, technology change, or regulatory event that makes this the right time. Why didn't this exist five years ago?
Tip
Strong "why now" slides point to an inflection - a new API, a regulation change, a behavior shift accelerated by COVID, AI, etc.
"Open banking APIs launched in 2023 made it possible to pull real-time financial data without screen-scraping for the first time."
TAM, SAM, SOM - but bottom-up. Start with the number of potential customers and what they'd pay, not a Gartner report.
Tip
Investors see through top-down sizing ("The global fintech market is $300B"). Build from your actual beachhead: customers × price × frequency.
"42,000 seed-stage startups raise annually in North America × $500/yr avg tool spend = $21M SAM"
How you make money. Pricing model, current revenue (if any), unit economics, and path to margins.
Tip
Be honest about where you are. "Pre-revenue with 200 waitlist signups" is fine at pre-seed. Fabricated ARR numbers get caught in diligence.
"Freemium → Pro at $29/mo. Current: 340 free users, 12% conversion to paid, $0 CAC (organic/referral)."
The evidence that this is working. Revenue, users, growth rate, retention, LOIs, pilots, waitlist - whatever you have.
Tip
Show the trend, not just the number. A chart going up and to the right is the most powerful slide in any deck. Even early traction matters if the slope is steep.
MRR chart from $0 → $8K in 4 months, with a callout: "42% MoM growth, 0 paid acquisition."
Why this team wins. Relevant experience, domain expertise, unfair advantages. 2–4 people max.
Tip
Connect each person's background to why they're uniquely suited to solve this problem. "Ex-Stripe engineer" matters more for a payments startup than a generic "10 years in tech."
Photo + name + one line: "Led payments infrastructure at Stripe (2018–2023). Built the system that processes $200B/yr."
Who else is in this space and why you win. Use a 2×2 matrix or a simple comparison table - not "we have no competitors."
Tip
Saying you have no competition signals you haven't done the work. Every startup competes with something - even if it's Excel, manual processes, or doing nothing.
2×2 matrix: X-axis = "Self-serve vs. Enterprise", Y-axis = "Generic vs. Founder-specific". You're in the top-right quadrant alone.
How much you're raising, what the terms are (or that they're open), and what you'll do with the money.
Tip
Be specific about milestones: "$1.5M gets us to 500 paying customers and Series A metrics in 18 months." Investors want to know what the next fundraise looks like.
"Raising $1.5M on a $8M post-money SAFE. Use of funds: 60% engineering, 25% GTM, 15% ops. Target: Series A in Q3 2026."