An investor pitch deck is a short slide presentation that tells an investor what a business does, why it can grow, how far it has got and how much the founder is raising. Its job is to get the investor interested enough to take a meeting. The decision to invest comes later, after the meetings and due diligence, which is the investor checking that everything they’ve been told is true.
I’ve raised £250m+ for my own companies and invested in 100+ businesses, so I’ve built decks as the founder raising and read them as the investor deciding whether to take the meeting.
What an Investor Pitch Deck Is For
The deck isn’t the business plan, the financial model or the legal paperwork. The business plan is the fuller document behind the deck, for investors who want to go further. The financial model is the spreadsheet every number in the deck comes from. The term sheet and the shareholders’ agreement come once an investor has decided to invest. An interested investor asks for each of these in turn, and a deck that tries to carry all of them is too long to read in one sitting.
An investor reading a deck is deciding whether the business is worth an hour of their time, and they read it as a run of questions. The problem raises the question of whether anyone pays to solve it. The solution raises the question of how many customers there are. The market raises the question of how the business makes money from them. A deck works when each slide answers the question the slide before it raised, all the way through to the amount being raised.
How to Create a Pitch Deck, Slide by Slide
The pitch deck structure below is a common order for investor decks. Slides can move or be added to fit the business: one with strong traction can bring that slide nearer the front, and one built on a patent may need a slide on its intellectual property.
| Slide | What goes on it | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Opening | Company name, what the business does and the amount being raised | Is this a deal I’d look at? |
| 2. Problem | Who has the problem, what it costs them now and how they deal with it today | Is this a real problem for real customers? |
| 3. Solution | What the product or service does, shown with a screenshot, photo or short demo | Does it solve the problem better than what customers do now? |
| 4. Market | Who the customers are, how many there are and what they spend | Is it big enough to be worth backing? |
| 5. Business model | Who pays, how much, how often and the margin on each sale | How does it make money? |
| 6. Traction | Revenue, customers, contracts or pilots, with dates | Is it working? |
| 7. Competition | What customers use now and where this business is better | Why will customers choose it? |
| 8. Go-to-market | How the business finds and wins customers, and what each one costs to win | How will it grow? |
| 9. Team | Who runs it, what they’ve done that matters here and the key hires planned | Can these people deliver it? |
| 10. Financials | Figures to date and projections, with the main assumptions | Do the numbers hold up? |
| 11. The raise | The amount, what it pays for, the milestone it reaches and the terms | What’s the deal? |
| 12. Close | A one-line summary and contact details | How do I take this further? |
The opening slide. It names the company, says plainly what the business does and for whom, and gives the amount being raised. From that slide alone an investor knows the sector, roughly the stage and the size of the round, which is enough to tell whether it’s the kind of deal they back.
The problem and the solution. The problem slide describes a real customer and what the problem costs them today, in money or time, rather than a broad trend in an industry. The solution slide shows the product. A screenshot, a photo or a short demo shows an investor more than a paragraph describing it.
The market. A market size built from the bottom up, the number of customers the business can sell to multiplied by what each spends a year, can be checked line by line. A single figure for a whole industry, taken from a report, doesn’t show how much of it this business can reach.
What gets an equity investor’s meeting is the size of the opportunity and how fast the business can grow into it. An equity investor makes their return when the business is sold or someone buys their shares, so they’re looking for a business that could be worth many times what they’re paying.
The business model. Who pays, how much, how often, and what the business keeps from each sale after the direct cost of providing it, known as the gross margin. A subscription business shows its price and how long customers stay. A business selling one-off products shows the average order and how often customers come back.
The competition. The slide names what customers use now, including doing the job by hand or putting up with the problem, and shows where this business is better: price, speed, quality, or something only it has, such as a patent or an exclusive contract.
The go-to-market slide. How the business reaches customers, through which channels, and what it has cost so far to win each one. Investors compare that cost with what a customer is worth over the time they stay, because a business that pays more to win a customer than it earns from them loses more money the faster it grows.
The team. The people running the business and what each of them has done that matters for this plan. Investors also look for a business that doesn’t depend on the founder for every sale and every decision, so the team slide names the senior hires the raise will pay for.
The raise. The amount, the main things it pays for with their costs, and the milestone the money gets the business to, such as a finished product, a first major contract or a set level of revenue. The amount comes from the plan: the cost of reaching that milestone, plus enough cash to keep going while the business raises again or starts to fund itself.
The founder sets the terms and puts them on the slide, either the pre-money valuation, which is what the business is worth before the money goes in, or the instrument being used, such as an advance subscription agreement. How the founder arrives at that number is covered in startup valuation. If the round qualifies for a tax relief scheme for investors, such as SEIS or EIS in the UK, that goes on this slide too.
The Slides Investors Read First
An investor screening a deck needs a handful of answers before anything else, and some slides give them more directly than others.
Whether it’s a deal they do. Every investor backs particular sectors, stages and cheque sizes. The opening slide and the raise slide give the sector, how far the business has got and how much it needs, so an investor can tell straight away whether it fits. An angel who invests £25,000 at a time in software businesses has no reason to read on through a deck from a manufacturer raising £3m.
Whether it’s working. The traction slide shows whether customers are paying for what the business sells. Strong numbers left late in the deck, behind several slides on the vision, may not be reached by an investor who has already decided the deck isn’t for them. A business with strong traction can put a line of it on the opening slide.
Whether it’s big enough. The market slide and the projections on the financials slide show whether the business could be worth many times what the investor is paying.
Who’s running it. The team slide shows whether the people behind the business have done what the plan needs them to do.
An investor can also check the deck against the public record before replying. In the UK, anyone can see a company’s officers, filed documents, previous names and registered charges free through Companies House, so the names and figures in the deck need to match what’s filed there.
Traction and Financials Slides
Traction is the progress so far: proof that customers want what the business sells. Investors weigh it by how much the customer has committed, so a customer paying every month shows more than a signed contract, and a signed contract shows more than a letter of intent.
| Evidence | What the customer has committed |
|---|---|
| Recurring paying customers | Regular payments |
| Paying customers | One or more payments |
| Signed contracts | A legal commitment to pay |
| Paid pilots | A payment to trial it |
| Pre-orders and deposits | A payment before delivery |
| Letters of intent | A written intention that isn’t binding |
| Free pilots with real use | Time and effort using it |
| A waitlist | An email address |
| Interest | Nothing yet |
A waitlist counts for something, but it sits near the bottom. A deck that leads with a waitlist of thousands and leaves a handful of paying customers to a later slide has the order the wrong way round for the investor reading it.
The traction slide shows dated figures and the trend behind them, usually as a monthly chart, so an investor can see the direction as well as the total. Each figure is defined: revenue that has been invoiced is a different number from contracts signed but not yet billed, and the slide says which it is.
The figures match the management accounts, the monthly figures the business produces for itself, because those are what the investor asks for next. How the stage of the business changes what investors expect from these numbers is set out in seed funding.
The financials slide shows the history as far back as it exists, with revenue, gross margin, costs and cash, and projections showing what the money turns into. The main assumptions go on the slide with the totals: how many customers, at what price, what each costs to win and how long they stay. A forecast that grows faster than anything the business has done before, with nothing on the slide explaining why, is the one investors question.
What sits behind the financials slide, from the profit and loss account to a forecast built on drivers an investor can test, is covered in how to prepare financials for investors.
Pitch Deck Design
Design matters in so far as it makes the deck quick to read. Each slide makes one point, and its headline states the point rather than labelling the slide.
| Slide headline that labels | Slide headline that states the point |
|---|---|
| Traction | Revenue has grown every month since launch |
| Customers | Every customer we’ve signed in the last year is still with us |
| Team | Our founders built and sold a business in this market |
What matters on the page is that text is large enough to read on a laptop or a phone, that charts are labelled with units and dates, and that the same figure is the same number everywhere it appears in the deck and in the model behind it. A PDF opens the same way on every device, so the layout the founder sees is the layout the investor sees.
What doesn’t matter much is expensive design. Animation disappears in a PDF, stock photos tell an investor nothing about the business, and an investor reading a plain deck with clear numbers gets the same information as they would from a polished one.
Sending a Deck vs Presenting It
A founder can keep two versions of the deck: one to send, which an investor reads without the founder there, and one to present, which the founder talks through.
| Deck to send | Deck to present | |
|---|---|---|
| Who explains it | The slides, on their own | The founder, with the slides behind them |
| Words on each slide | Enough to make sense without the founder | Fewer, with the detail said out loud |
| Format | PDF, or a shared link that shows which slides were read | Full-screen presentation, often with a live demo |
| Next step | A reply asking for a meeting, or no reply | Questions, then requests for the data room and the model |
A deck that invites someone to invest is regulated in many countries, so who it can be sent to depends on where the investors are.
In the UK. Under section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, a person in the course of business can’t communicate an invitation or inducement to invest unless they’re an authorised person, such as a firm authorised by the FCA, or the content is approved by one. Private raises usually rely on exemptions in the Financial Promotion Order. For certified high net worth individuals, the investor has to have signed a statement within the previous 12 months, and the deck has to carry a prescribed warning at the beginning that starts: “The content of this promotion has not been approved by an authorised person”.
In the US. A company raising under Rule 506(b) can raise an unlimited amount from accredited investors but can’t use general solicitation or advertising, so the deck goes to people the company or its advisers already know, not to a public audience.
Elsewhere. Australia, Singapore and the UAE have their own rules on who a share offer can be made to, and the check is made in each country where the investors are.
FAQs
What is a pitch deck?
A pitch deck is a short slide presentation that sets out what a business does, how it makes money, how far it has got and how much it’s raising. Founders send it to investors, or present it in a meeting, to get them interested enough to look further.
How many slides should an investor pitch deck have?
There’s no fixed number. The deck needs enough slides to answer an investor’s questions in order, from the problem through to the raise, and no more. A common structure runs to 12, and a business can add or merge slides to fit what it needs to show.
Should the valuation go in the pitch deck?
It can. The founder sets the valuation and has to justify it, so putting it on the raise slide, with the amount and the instrument, tells the investor exactly what deal they’re looking at.
What’s the difference between a pitch deck and a business plan?
A pitch deck is the short version that gets an investor interested enough to take a meeting. The business plan is the fuller document behind it, read by investors who want to go further, and it sets out the market, the competition, the operations and the financial projections in detail.
Can a pitch deck be sent to anyone?
No. In many countries, including the UK and the US, who a deck can go to is regulated. In the UK, a deck that invites someone to invest is a financial promotion, so it either goes to investors who fall within an exemption, such as certified high net worth or sophisticated investors, or its content is approved by an FCA-authorised firm. In the US, a company raising under Rule 506(b) can’t market the deck to the public.
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If you’re raising and want it run properly, from making the business investable to getting in front of the right investors, that’s what Capital Raiser does. If you’re earlier than that, join Capital Catalyst for free and learn how every type of funding works before you take any of it. To see how real decks hold up when an investor reads them, watch the free Pitch Deck Autopsy.
This is general information on how pitch decks are used in a raise and isn’t legal advice.
