Pitch Deck: the 12 Slides, a Template and a Worked Example

A pitch deck is a short slide presentation for investors. It covers your product, your customers, the market size, how you make money, who runs the company and how much you are asking for. Partners, grant committees and large customers read decks too. Common guidance puts a deck at 10 to 20 slides, with 10 to 15 the most cited range¹. Investors often read it before they meet you, so each slide makes one point and carries one number you can source. Below are the 12 slides in order, a template and a deck filled in from a real idea check.

What a pitch deck is and what it is for

A pitch deck cuts a business plan down to slides that each carry one claim. It needs the same research as a full plan: market size, rivals, prices, costs. The format is what changes. Each slide carries one point, and each number on it carries its source.

The deck’s job is to get you the next meeting. It works when an investor asks for a call already knowing how much you want and what the money pays for. So the ask slide names a figure; “we are raising a round” is not an ask.

Four kinds of readers open decks, and each looks at different slides:

Investors read the market, the business model, the team and the ask.
Partners read what you bring them and how the deal splits revenue.
Grant committees read the problem, the outcome you promise and the budget line by line.
Large customers read the problem in their own terms, proof that you deliver, and the price.

You will usually keep two versions of the same deck.

Version	How it is read	What changes
Send-ahead	Alone, before any meeting; investors spend about 2 minutes 42 seconds on a deck on average²	Full sentences, a source line under every number, sent as a PDF
Presented	On a screen while you talk	One headline and one figure per slide in large type; you say the rest

Send the first version when someone asks for “your deck”. Keep the second for the meeting room or the video call.

Marker sketch of a person arranging a row of slide sheets on a table beside a five-box checklist, with rejected sheets piled aside — Vet a template before you fill it: investor slide order, a stage-fit slide count, editable files and real content prompts on every slide. fox021.com · AI-generated illustration

The 12 slides of a pitch deck, in order

Sequoia Capital’s published guidance for a startup pitch runs through company purpose, problem, solution, why now, market potential, competition and alternatives, business model, team and financials³. The 12 slides below follow that order, add traction and go-to-market after the business model, and close with the team, the financials and the ask, which investors raise next.

The sample lines come from the worked example below: an indoor golf lounge we ran through our idea check. All sample figures are from that example and use our method.

#	Slide	What it shows	Sample line	Where the number comes from
1	Cover	Name and a one-line pitch	Indoor golf simulator lounge with bar service in a suburban Minneapolis strip-mall unit^ex	The idea line of your check
2	Problem	Who hurts and how, with evidence	3 complaints on reliability and trust^ex, 3 on service and support^ex	Complaint counts by theme
3	Solution	What you do about the problem	Hourly bays, after-work leagues, winter memberships, a bar	None; this is your product
4	Why now	What changed that opens the window	Cut it if you have no sourced change	A sourced fact, or no slide
5	Market	TAM, then SAM and SOM built bottom up	TAM $1.7 billion (2023)^ex	The check’s TAM plus your own bottom-up build
6	Competition	Named rivals and how you differ	6 direct competitors^ex; Five Iron Golf holds 27% of visibility^ex	Direct count and visibility shares
7	Business model	Price, frequency, margin, CAC, LTV, payback	$45 price^ex, 4 purchases a month^ex, LTV $216^ex	The check’s unit economics block
8	Traction	Sign-ups, pre-sales, demand	The check found no search-demand figure^ex	The demand field, or your own test
9	Go-to-market	The first channel and its cost	After-work leagues as the first channel	None; your plan
10	Team	Why these people can run this	Names, roles, one relevant result each	None; your résumés
11	Financials	12 to 36 months of revenue and cost	Built from the unit inputs on slide 7	Your financial model
12	The ask	Amount, use of funds, milestones	Amount from the fit-out cost plan	Your cost plan

The table works by these rules: each slide makes one point, and each number traces to a line in the right column or carries the mark “assumption”. If a slide’s right column is empty, consider cutting it: drop a “why now” slide with no sourced change rather than fill it with a trend you cannot cite.

The order shifts with your stage. Before revenue, lead with the problem and the team, because that is what an investor is betting on. Once you have paying customers, move traction up to slide 2 or 3. Numbers that already happened outrank any market estimate. For an early-stage investor meeting, 10 to 15 slides is the most cited range, and Series A decks can run to 15 to 20¹. To get down to 10, merge solution with why now, and go-to-market with business model.

Risks and the full financial model go into an appendix after slide 12, along with the cap table and long team bios. You open the appendix when someone asks. The main deck stays at one idea per slide.

Hand-drawn sketch of hands comparing pages from five stacks of printed slides of different thickness on a wooden table — Study funded decks side by side: early ones run short, while later rounds carry more history and grow to dozens of slides. fox021.com · AI-generated illustration

How to make a pitch deck in 7 steps

Each step below ends with one output. When all seven outputs exist, the deck exists.

Write the company in one sentence. Sequoia’s guidance opens with company purpose, defined in a single declarative sentence³. Name the customer and the product, and say where you sell. Output: the cover line.
Collect every number with its source. Market size, competitor names, price, purchase frequency, margin and acquisition cost each need a line that says where they came from: an idea check, a supplier quote, a test you ran. Anything else gets the word “assumption” beside it. Output: a source sheet, one row per figure.
Group the slides into four pillars, in the table’s order. Story holds cover, problem, solution and why now. Market holds market size and competition. Model holds business model, traction and go-to-market. People and money hold the team and the financials, and end with the ask. Output: a 12-slide outline that a reader can follow by pillar.
Write each headline as a claim. “Business model” is a label; “Each customer repays acquisition cost in under a month” is a claim, and in our golf example it rests on a payback of 0.9 months^ex. Output: 12 headlines that tell a story when skimmed on their own.
Build the number slides. Size the market from the bottom up: units times customers per unit times spend per customer. Put the five unit economics inputs on the model slide so a reader can change them. Output: the market and business model slides, each with its source lines.
Tailor the emphasis to the reader. An angel reads team and market first. A lender reads the financials and the collateral. A grant committee reads the budget and the outcome. Reorder, and leave the numbers unchanged. Output: one deck per audience, from the same source sheet.
Design and test. Keep to 2 to 3 colors and 2 to 3 fonts⁴. For the presented version, Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule is a working limit: 10 slides, no more than 20 minutes, no font smaller than 30 points⁵. Then give the send-ahead PDF to someone who has not seen it, and stop them at the average reading time of 2 minutes 42 seconds². Ask what you sell and how much you want. Output: two files, one to send ahead and one to present.

Scheme of 7 steps in order: Write the company in one sentence → Collect every number with its source → Group the slides into four pillars → Write… — Each step builds on the one before it: start with «Write the company in one sentence» and get to «Design and test» only when the steps between are done.

Worked example: a deck filled in from an idea check

The idea was “Indoor golf simulator lounge with bar service in a suburban Minneapolis strip-mall unit: after-work leagues, winter memberships and hourly bay rentals”^ex. The check returned the verdict “Worth building”^ex with a score of 67^ex, an example by our method. A local venue like this raises from angels or borrows from a lender, which is the deck many first-time founders write. The check fills five slides: cover, problem, market, competition and business model. It leaves two open, traction and the ask, and both are shown as gaps below. The risk appendix and the method behind every figure close the example.

Cover and problem

The cover carries the idea line as written. The problem slide groups complaints about existing offers by theme. In the example by our method, 3 complaints concern reliability and trust^ex and 3 concern service and support^ex; the remaining themes, other^ex, paperwork and payment^ex and quality^ex, get one complaint each. That makes 9 complaints in total, by our method. Nine is a small base, so the slide quotes counts instead of percentages, and the founder adds interviews before the meeting.

Market

The check cites a TAM of $1.7 billion for 2023, from gaugius.com, an example by our method^ex. A top-down figure from 2023 says little about one strip-mall unit in a Minneapolis suburb. The slide shows it once, then builds SAM and SOM from the bottom up. Start with golfers within a drive-time radius who play in winter: that is the SAM. The SOM is the part of them one unit can serve, capped by the bay hours per week it can sell.

Competition

The check counted 6 direct competitors^ex. The table lists five of the rivals it measured, of three types, with each one’s share of visibility in the check’s searches, in %, as an example by our method.

Competitor	Type	Share of visibility
Five Iron Golf	Direct	27%^ex
Dryvebox	Indirect	20%^ex
TwinCitiesGolf.com	Direct	11%^ex
Mulligans Indoor Golf	Direct	9%^ex
Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board	Alternative	5%^ex

The slide names these five and states one difference per row. A deck that says “no direct competitors” next to this table loses the reader at slide 6.

Business model

The inputs, all an example by our method: price $45^ex, 4 purchases a month^ex, a 12% margin^ex, a 10-month customer lifetime^ex and a CAC of $20^ex. The outputs: LTV $216^ex, LTV to CAC of 10.8^ex, payback in 0.9 months^ex.

Those ratios are high, and an investor will test the inputs first. In our example, you need to defend two lines: the example’s $20 CAC for a venue that needs local awareness, and its 12% margin on a bar-and-bays business. The slide shows all five inputs so a reader can change them. In our example, a CAC of $60 (assumption) would cut LTV to CAC to 3.6 and stretch payback to 2.8 months. Write that line in your notes before an investor works it out for you.

Traction

The check found no search-demand figure: its demand source is “none”^ex. The traction slide says so and replaces the gap with evidence the founder collects: league sign-ups, winter membership pre-sales, a waitlist for bay hours. No figures appear on the slide until those tests produce them.

The ask

The check gives no fit-out cost, so the ask starts as a formula, not a blank: the amount equals the quotes for the simulators, the build-out and the bar, plus rent and payroll for the months until the lounge breaks even, plus a reserve. Fill each line from a quote. Use of funds is the same lines as shares of the amount, and each milestone names what the money buys first, such as the opening date or the first league season.

Appendix: risks

The check listed four risks, quoted here as an example by our method:

“Mulligans Indoor Golf already covers most of the offer, so bay rental buyers may choose it by default.”^ex
“Alcohol and tobacco rules must be met before serving drinks, which could delay opening or add cost.”^ex In Minneapolis, any bar or restaurant that serves alcohol on site, including beer and wine, needs an on-sale liquor license from the city⁶. Put the license and its timeline on the milestone slide.
“Two nearby golf venues have already closed, so the local demand for indoor golf may not last through the year.”^ex
“Equipment may be stolen or damaged in a strip-mall unit, adding repair costs.”^ex

Each risk gets one mitigation line. Keep the list in the appendix and open it when asked.

Our method in the open

The check behind this example ran 17 search queries^ex and drew on 33 sources^ex, an example by our method. These are the rules it applies.

Unit economics. In our example, LTV is price × purchases per month × margin × lifetime in months, using the example’s inputs: $45 × 4 × 0.12 × 10 = $216. In our example, LTV to CAC is LTV ÷ CAC, with both figures taken from the example: $216 ÷ $20 = 10.8. Payback in months equals CAC ÷ (price × purchases per month × margin). The monthly contribution per customer is $45 × 4 × 0.12 = $21.60, an example by our method^ex^ex^ex, so payback is $20 ÷ $21.60 = 0.9 months.

Competitors. The check counts direct rivals and reports each competitor’s share of visibility, in %, as measured in the check’s searches.

Pains. Complaints about existing offers are grouped by theme with a count per theme. The deck quotes counts, never percentages.

Evidence rules for the deck:

Every number on a slide carries its source line.
A figure with no source is labeled “assumption” on the slide.
A top-down figure such as TAM never stands alone; SAM and SOM are built bottom up.
A field the check could not fill is shown as a gap and never filled with a guess.

Pitch deck template: what to check before you use one

Template galleries mix investor decks with other kinds of slides: portfolios and brand guides sit next to sales decks. Run five checks before you open one:

The slide headings follow investor order: problem before solution, market before model, the ask last.
The slide count fits your stage, 10 to 15 for most early rounds¹.
The file opens in an editor you already use, in a common editable format.
“Free” means free to download and edit, with no watermark that appears at export.
Each slide gives a prompt for content, beyond a layout to fill.

A template that fails check 5 gives you design and leaves the work of deciding what each slide says.

Download our pitch deck template

Our pitch deck template is a PowerPoint file with 10 slides: company, problem, solution, market, competition, business model, traction, risks, team and the ask. It follows Sequoia Capital’s 10-slide order, with traction and risks in place of why now and vision and the financials folded into the ask, and each slide carries a prompt and a source line. Add why now, go-to-market and financials from the table above when your stage needs them. Two more of our templates feed the deck. The files are free; you sign up to download them.

Pitch deck template, PowerPoint file
10 slides, each with its prompt and source line Competitive analysis template, Excel file
competitors, grid, complaints, SWOT, positioning: for the competition slide Lean canvas template, Word file
9 boxes on one page: for the problem, solution and business model slides

Whichever file you start from, add three pieces:

The business model slide: five input boxes for price, purchases per month, margin, CAC and lifetime, with LTV and payback calculated from them.
A risk table with three columns: risk, source, mitigation (the file gives risks a main slide; the outline above sends the full table to an appendix).
Source sheet: one row per figure, with its source or the word “assumption”.

Run the idea check to fill the cover, problem, market, competition and business model slides from its report, as in the worked example.

Make it yourself or hire a designer

The content and the numbers stay yours in either case. A designer lays out decisions you have already made. Write the headlines, fill the source sheet, then hand both over.

Pitch deck examples from funded startups

These five decks are public. Each row lists only facts of that deck or its round.

Company	Year	Round	Slides	Study it for
UberCab	Late 2008	Concept deck	25⁷	Pitching before the product exists
TheFacebook	Spring 2004	Advertiser media kit⁸	Not checked	Engagement shown before revenue
LinkedIn	2004	Series B, $10 million, Greylock⁹	37⁹	Length at a later round
Buffer	2011	Seed, $450,000 from 18 investors¹⁰	Not checked	The traction slide
SEOmoz (Moz)	2012	Series B, $18 million, Foundry Group¹¹	Not checked	The round itself

UberCab. Garrett Camp wrote the 25-slide concept deck in late 2008 and published it on Medium in 2017⁷. Read it as a deck for an idea with no product yet: the market and the difference from existing options carry it.

TheFacebook. Eduardo Saverin built the spring 2004 deck as a media kit to sell advertising on thefacebook.com, and it led with engagement metrics that preceded revenue⁸. If you have users and no revenue, its traction slides are the model.

LinkedIn. The Series B deck raised $10 million from Greylock in August 2004, and it ran 37 slides; Reid Hoffman later published it⁹. A 37-slide deck at a Series B sits outside the 10-to-15 range quoted for early rounds. Later rounds carry more history, and their decks grow with it.

Buffer. Joel Gascoigne describes the 2011 seed round as $450,000 from 18 investors¹⁰. You will often see it reported as $500,000; the founder’s own figure is the one to cite.

Moz. SEOmoz received an $18 million Series B from Foundry Group, with an additional investment from Ignition Partners, in 2012¹¹.

Pitch deck mistakes that cost the next meeting

A market slide with only a top-down TAM. Fix: show TAM once. Build SAM and SOM from units and customers.
“No competitors.” Fix: name direct rivals and alternatives, one difference each.
Ratios without inputs. Fix: show price, frequency, margin, CAC and lifetime next to LTV and payback.
A gap filled with a guess. Fix: label it “assumption” or state that the figure is missing and how you will get it.
No amount on the ask slide. Fix: one figure, three uses of funds, the milestone it buys.
Fonts below 30 points in the presented version⁵. Fix: move the detail into the send-ahead PDF.

FAQ

What is a pitch deck?

A pitch deck is a short slide presentation for investors: it shows what you sell and to whom, the market size, how you make money, who runs the company and the amount you ask for. Decks also reach partners and grant committees, and large customers read them as well.

How do I create a pitch deck?

Write the company in one sentence, collect every number with its source, and arrange 12 slides in investor order. Write each headline as a claim and build the market and model slides from the bottom up. Test the PDF on a reader who has under three minutes.

Where can I get a pitch deck template?

Download our free 10-slide PowerPoint template above, or build the 12-slide outline from the table. If you use another one, check slide order, slide count, editable format, what “free” covers, and whether it prompts for content.

What goes on the financial slides if I have no revenue yet?

Put your unit economics on the model slide: price, purchases per month, margin, CAC and lifetime, each with a source or the word “assumption”. Build the 12-to-36-month projection from those inputs and show missing figures as gaps.

Run the check first, then build the 12 slides from its report.

Check your idea before you build the deck

How do I come up with the actual number for the ask slide if I don't know my costs yet?

Fox Start the ask as a formula, not a blank: the amount equals the quotes for your equipment and build-out, plus rent and payroll for the months until you break even, plus a reserve. Fill each line from a quote, then show use of funds as the same lines as shares of the amount, with milestones naming what the money buys first. Get those quotes this week and put one figure on the slide; "we are raising a round" is not an ask.

Someone asked me to send my deck. Should it be the same file I present from?

Fox Keep two versions. The send-ahead deck is read alone, so it uses full sentences and a source line under every number, sent as a PDF; investors spend about 2 minutes 42 seconds on a deck on average. The presented one carries one headline and one figure per slide in large type, and you say the rest. Before you send, hand the PDF to someone new, stop them at that reading time and ask what you sell and how much you want.

My LTV to CAC ratio looks really high. Will investors buy it or think I made it up?

Fox Expect them to test the inputs first. In the golf example the ratio was 10.8, and the founder has to defend the $20 CAC and the 12% margin; a CAC of $60, used as an assumption, would cut LTV to CAC to 3.6 and stretch payback to 2.8 months. Show all five inputs on the model slide so a reader can change them. Run that harsher case on your own numbers and write it in your notes before the meeting.

All I have for the market slide is one big industry number. Is that enough?

Fox Not on its own. A market slide with only a top-down TAM is one of the mistakes that cost the next meeting: show the TAM once, then build SAM and SOM from the bottom up, as units times customers per unit times spend per customer. In the golf example a top-down figure from 2023 said little about one strip-mall unit. Count the customers you can reach locally and multiply by what you can sell them.

Sources

slideegg.com, 07/24/2026
experience.dropbox.com, 10/08/2026
sequoiacap.com, 03/15/2019
canva.com, 10/16/2026
guykawasaki.com, 12/30/2005
minneapolismn.gov, 09/03/2026
heydecks.com, 08/04/2026
pitches.ai, 10/06/2026
venturemage.com, 04/23/2026
attach.io, 10/16/2026
moz.com, 05/01/2012

Pitch deck: what goes on each of the 12 slides, with a template and a worked example

What a pitch deck is and what it is for

The 12 slides of a pitch deck, in order

How to make a pitch deck in 7 steps