Pitch Deck

A pitch deck is a presentation made up of a few slides. A young company uses it to introduce itself to people who want to invest money. The English word “pitch” here means roughly a short sales speech, and “deck” is the stack of slides. Ten to fifteen slides are common, which are typically presented in about ten minutes. The deck isn’t meant to explain everything, but to spark curiosity. Anyone who is convinced will then ask for details, figures, and contracts.

Why ten slides can decide millions

Anyone who invests in young companies receives a great many inquiries. A single investor often sees several hundred to a thousand decks per year. For each one, they initially spend only a few minutes. The deck is therefore usually the first, and sometimes the only, impression. Anyone who fails to make clear what it’s about within that time won’t even get invited for a meeting.

For the company, a great deal is at stake. Young companies often don’t yet earn any money at the start, but they do pay salaries and server costs. They need fresh capital just to keep operating at all. A convincing deck can trigger funding worth several million euros. A weak deck doesn’t automatically mean a bad idea, but it often means the end of the conversation.

By the way, a pitch deck is not a business plan. A business plan is a long document with many pages of text and tables. The deck is the short, visual version of that. You can think of it like a movie trailer: it doesn’t reveal the whole plot, but is meant to make people want to go see the film.

Which slides are almost always included

The order of the slides has become fairly standardized over the years. At the start comes the problem: what’s currently going wrong, and for whom? This is followed by the company’s own solution, often with an image of the product. Next comes the market, i.e. the question of how many potential customers there actually are. Then follow the business model and the question of how the company makes money.

After that, things get more concrete. One slide shows the progress made so far, referred to in industry jargon as traction: user numbers, revenue, or first paying customers. Another slide presents the competition and explains why the company can do it better. There is almost always a slide about the team, because investors invest heavily in people. At the end comes the amount being requested, and what it will be spent on.

A common misconception is that more information looks better. Crowded slides with long paragraphs distract from the conversation. Good decks work with few numbers, clear graphics, and short sentences. Many companies have two versions: a very brief one for presenting live, and a more detailed one for reading afterward by email.

Pitch decks in the AI industry and in the news

An especially large number of decks are currently being written around artificial intelligence. New companies are building tools for programmers, medical analysis, or customer service. They need a lot of money because computing on specialized graphics chips is expensive. Such decks therefore often include figures on how high the cost per query is. Investors carefully check whether any profit can remain in the end at all.

In business news, the term usually comes up in connection with funding rounds. It might then be reported that a company raised fifty million euros with its deck. Sometimes old decks from well-known companies are published later on. Airbnb's deck from 2008 is one such example and is still used as a template today.

The term is now also used outside of startups. Student companies, clubs, and research groups likewise call their brief introductory presentation a pitch deck. The basic principle always remains the same. Within a few minutes, it must become clear what problem is being solved and why this particular group is the one to solve it.