Pitch deck design — Startup
A studio service
Startup pitch deck design for founders building their first deck.
First-time founders get two weeks to build a deck that VC partners have seen for fifteen years as a template. We design startup decks that signal the company already knew what it looked like.
N° 01What first-time founders get wrong
Three failure modes. All avoidable.
01
Starting with a template
Templates encode the assumptions of the person who built them — usually for a different company, at a different stage, in a different vertical. Starting from a template means you inherit all their decisions.
02
Burying traction
If you have real traction, it should be in the first four slides — not slide 11. Investors skim. Your best fact should arrive before they've decided to skim the rest.
03
Overdesigning the title slide, underdesigning the ask
Most first-time founders spend 80% of their design energy on slide 1. The ask slide is where you lose people. It should be the most legible, most specific slide in the deck.
N° 02Who this is for
Early stage. All formats.
01
Pre-seed founders
Prepping accelerator applications (YC, Techstars, 500) or first formal VC outreach. Narrative does the work traction can't yet.
02
Seed-stage teams
First formal VC outreach. The deck is usually your first truly designed artefact — we treat it that way.
03
Demo-day companies
Preparing the investor version after demo day. Two cuts of the same content: live-presentation version and async-reading version.
N° 03Proof
First-time founders. First rounds.
“I'd been iterating on the deck for three months and still couldn't get a second meeting. After the redesign I booked four follow-ups in two weeks. The narrative was the same; the deck finally carried it.”
“They told me within five minutes of the brief that my ask slide was my weakest. No one had ever told me that. They redesigned it and the next conversation ended with 'send me terms.'”
Sample slides
Six slide archetypes, in house style.
Generated in our editorial discipline — framed to your vertical. Every deck we ship is original and bespoke.
Investment
Fixed price. No surprises.
Startup pitch deck — from $4,800.
- 10–12 finished slides, stage-appropriate
- Editable PowerPoint + Google Slides
- One-pager PDF companion
- One revision round
- 5–8 business day delivery
Questions
The answers we give most often.
- How many slides for a seed deck?
- 10–12 slides is the standard for pre-seed and seed. Keep it short; narrative-forward decks outperform slide-count-heavy ones at early stage.
- Can I use the Y Combinator template as a starting point?
- Yes as a starting point. We frequently redesign YC-structured decks. The structure is fine; the visual execution is what we change.
- What's the difference between a demo day deck and an investor deck?
- Demo day decks are built for a live three-minute presentation — big type, minimal copy, sparse. Investor decks are built for asynchronous reading in an inbox. Both are cuts of the same material.
- What if I don't have traction yet?
- Lean on team and market signal instead. Traction is one lever — a very strong team in a very clear market can move past a traction gap at pre-seed.
- How much does a startup pitch deck cost?
- From $4,800. Most seed-stage decks land between $4,800 and $6,500 depending on slide count and research depth.
- Do you work with accelerator companies (YC, Techstars)?
- Yes. We regularly design post-accelerator investor decks that are distinct from the demo day version.
- Do I need a brand before hiring you for the deck?
- No. About 40% of our startup decks are for companies without final brand guidelines. We build the deck's visual system; many founders use it as the starting point for their first brand.
- Can you design the deck and a one-pager together?
- Yes — a one-pager companion is included in every deck project. It compresses the deck into a single PDF for cold-email threads.
Next step
Ready to build the deck?
We'll have a first draft in your inbox in five business days.