How to make a pitch deck

Step 1: Define your audience and ask

Before writing a single slide, answer two questions in one sentence each:

1. Who exactly is reading this deck? "A Series A VC partner who sees thirty decks per week and has fifteen minutes" is a useful audience definition. "Investors" is not.
2. What specific action do you want them to take? "Book a 30-minute call" or "wire $250K on a SAFE" are useful ask definitions. "Learn about us" is not.

These two answers shape every subsequent decision — slide count, content density, tone, and the prominence of the ask slide. A deck designed for a partner's inbox read is structured differently from a deck designed for a live partner meeting.

Step 2: Nail the narrative arc

Your deck needs a logical spine — a connected argument where each slide follows from the previous one. Write the spine in plain sentences before you open any design tool:

1. The world has a specific problem.
2. We have a specific solution.
3. The market is large enough to justify venture investment.
4. Here is what the product looks like and how it generates revenue.
5. Here is the evidence it's working.
6. Here is why no one else has solved it as well as we have.
7. Here is the team that can do this.
8. Here is the financial case.
9. Here is what we want from you.

If you can't write a coherent sentence for each of these points, the deck will reflect that incoherence. No amount of design fixes a weak argument.

Step 3: Write the outline

An outline is a list of slide titles with one-sentence descriptions of what each slide argues. It is not a list of slide topics — it's a list of claims.

Wrong: "Market size." Right: "The addressable market is $4.2B, growing at 18% annually, driven by three structural tailwinds."

Write the outline before designing anything. Share it with a co-founder or trusted advisor and get agreement on the argument before the design begins. The outline is the deck — the design is how you communicate it visually.

Step 4: Gather your content

Collect everything the deck will need before starting the design:

• Data and metrics: ARR, MRR, customer count, growth rates, unit economics. Have the exact numbers, not approximations.
• Product assets: High-resolution screenshots or renders. If the product is pre-built, a mockup or prototype screenshot.
• Team photos: Professional headshots. Inconsistent photography (some studio, some iPhone selfies) undermines the team slide.
• Market research: Specific sources for TAM/SAM figures, ready to cite in footnotes.
• Financial projections: A spreadsheet you can defend — with assumptions stated explicitly.
• Competitive landscape: A list of named competitors with their positioning, pricing, and key differentiators.

Step 5: Choose the format

The format decision affects how the deck will be shared and maintained:

• PowerPoint: Best for enterprise, institutional, and Series A+ contexts. Widely expected. Fully editable. Fonts can be embedded.
• Google Slides: Best for early-stage sharing via link. Always the latest version. Collaborative. Slightly less typographic control than PowerPoint.
• Figma: Best for companies with a product design team that already works in Figma. Pixel-perfect. Requires Figma access to edit.
• Canva: Best for early-stage teams without a designer. Highly maintainable by non-designers. Slightly less design flexibility than the alternatives.

For most founders raising a seed round, Google Slides or PowerPoint is the right default. The choice of tool matters far less than the quality of the content it contains.

Step 6: Design the visual system

Before building individual slides, establish the visual system that will apply across the whole deck:

• Colour palette: One primary colour (your brand colour), one accent colour (for emphasis and data highlights), black and white for type. Three to four colours maximum.
• Typography: One display typeface for headings (heavier weight, larger size), one body typeface for body copy and captions. Use weights and sizes to create hierarchy, not a third typeface.
• Grid: A consistent margin and column structure that every slide uses. Slides that don't share a grid look like different documents.
• Slide master: In PowerPoint and Google Slides, set up a master slide with these elements locked in. In Figma, set up shared styles. Don't design slide-by-slide without a system — you'll rebuild inconsistencies in every revision.

Step 7: Build the slides

Build in order, one slide at a time. Rules for each slide:

• One idea per slide. If you need a bullet point to say "but also" — that's a second slide.
• Legible in under 15 seconds. Every slide should communicate its core claim in a single skim.
• No decoration. Every visual element should carry information. If removing it doesn't change the meaning, remove it.
• Data with sources. Every statistic needs a footnoted source. "Industry estimates" is not a source.

Do not over-invest in slide 1 at the expense of the ask slide. The ask slide is where most decks are underbuilt. Treat it as the most important slide in the deck — because for the investor, it often is.

Step 8: Test and iterate

Send the deck to three people before it goes to investors. The right testers are: someone who has seen many pitch decks from the investor side, a founder who has raised capital before, and a domain expert who knows your market.

Ask them three questions:

1. "What does this company do?" — If they can't answer this correctly after one read, the description is broken.
2. "What are they asking for?" — If they can't answer this, the ask slide is not prominent enough.
3. "Would you take a meeting based on this?" — The honest answer to this question is the most useful feedback you'll receive before the pitch season starts.

Iterate on structure before iterating on design. A well-structured deck with average design outperforms a beautifully designed deck with a weak argument — every time.