Pitch deck template: the story investors expect, built from your numbers

The pitch deck structure, slide by slide

Investors read a deck in about three minutes before deciding whether to take the meeting. Every slide should make one point, and its title should say that point, so the deck makes sense from the titles alone.

1. 1. Title and hookYour company name and one sentence a stranger understands: what you do and for whom. The example opens with Maps draw zones. Floods hit buildings., a tension in six words.
2. 2. ProblemWho has the problem, how often, and what it costs them. One number beats three adjectives: Nearly four in ten floods hit off the map.
3. 3. SolutionWhat you built, shown rather than described: a screenshot, a before-and-after, or the one mechanism that makes it work.
4. 4. Why nowWhat changed that makes this possible or urgent today: a technology, a regulation, a shift in how people buy.
5. 5. MarketSize it bottom-up: how many customers could buy, times what they would pay a year. Investors discount a top-down "1% of a huge market" claim.
6. 6. TractionThe chart that proves people want it: revenue, users or pilots over time, with retention and a named customer if you can.
7. 7. Business modelHow you make money and what one customer is worth: price, gross margin, payback period.
8. 8. CompetitionAn honest map of the alternatives, including doing nothing, and the one reason you win.
9. 9. TeamWhy these people are the ones to build this: the experience that matches the problem, not every past employer.
10. 10. The askHow much you are raising, what it buys (the milestones it reaches) and by when. The example's ask does the math: $4.5M takes the company to 60 customers and $4M ARR in a year.

What the example deck gets right

• Every title is a sentence. Read only the titles and you have the pitch.
• Every number traces to a source. The traction chart, the market size and the ask all come from the brief, so nothing is invented.
• It builds tension before the answer. Problem and insight come before the product, so the solution lands as a relief, not a feature list.
• It ends on a decision. The last slide says exactly what the money buys, so the next conversation is about terms.

How to make your pitch deck with DeckLume

1. Describe the roundPaste the brief below and fill in the brackets, or write a few lines in your own words: who it's for, what you're raising and what it buys.
2. Attach what you haveYour one-pager, financial model, previous deck or investor update (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, up to 25 MB each). Add your website and DeckLume takes your colours, fonts and logo from it.
3. Check the storylineDeckLume drafts the outline slide by slide. Reorder, rewrite or cut before anything is designed.
4. Refine by chat or by handAsk for changes in plain words, like "make the market slide bottom-up" or "cut the team slide to three people", or edit the text yourself. Every version is saved.
5. Send it the way investors likeShare a link with a password and an end date and see how often it was opened, download one HTML file that opens anywhere, or download it for PowerPoint.

Five pitch deck mistakes investors notice

1. Titles that are labels. "Market" tells the reader nothing; "We can serve a quarter of a $2.6B market today" tells them why to keep reading.
2. Top-down market sizing. Show the customers you can reach and what they pay.
3. A traction slide without a time axis. Growth is a slope; show it.
4. Hiding the ask. Say the amount and the milestones on one slide, at the end.
5. Too many slides. If a slide doesn't change the investor's mind, make it a detail card or cut it. See how many slides a presentation needs.

For the full method, from narrative to the follow-up email, read how to make a pitch deck.