One-pager or pitch deck, which do investors want first?

Most founders who ask me about an investor one-pager are really asking a question about order, whether to lead with a single page or go straight in with the full deck, and whether a template downloaded on a Sunday evening will do the job. The short answer is that the two documents do different jobs, investors usually meet the one-pager first, and a template can give you a layout but it cannot give you the sentence that makes someone reply.

I spent the early part of my career on the other side of the table, in asset management in London, and for a good four or five years my job was putting together investor communications, the decks and the one-pagers and the term sheets. Since then I have written and designed a great many of both for founders, and the pattern has barely moved. The shortest document is the one that gets read first, and if it does not land, the longer one rarely gets opened.

What each one is for

A one-pager is a teaser, and its only job is to get a reply, from an investor you have written to cold, from an angel a friend has introduced you to, or from a partner at a fund who forwards it to a colleague with a line saying have a look at this. It has to make sense on its own, printed, forwarded or skimmed on a phone between meetings, because you will not be there to explain it.

A pitch deck is the longer story, usually 10 to 20 slides with just enough numbers to be credible, and it exists to earn the meeting and then carry it. Even the deck does not get long with anyone, since DocSend’s data shows that investors spend less than three minutes reviewing a pitch deck, so the deck is still a skim, just a longer one. I have written more about what earns its place on those slides in what investors read in a pitch deck.

When investors want which

In most raises the one-pager goes first and the deck follows to whoever asks for it. That order suits the investor, who can decide in under a minute whether to give you three more, and it suits you too, since the deck you send second lands with someone who has already said they are interested. It also hands an introducer something easy to pass on, and introductions travel a lot further when the person making them does not have to write the summary themselves, which matters if you are working through your own network the way I describe in how to find investors.

The exception is when someone asks for the deck up front, as plenty of accelerator applications and some funds do, and in that case you send the deck and attach the one-pager as well rather than making them wait. If a lender or a more formal process is asking for a full business plan, that is a different conversation again, and it is worth reading do you need a business plan to raise before you write one.

What goes on a one-pager

Everything on a one-pager should already be in your deck in a longer form, so you want a line in plain words on what the company does, then the problem, the solution, the traction, the market, the team, the business model and the ask, meaning how much you are raising and what it pays for. SETsquared, run by a partnership of UK universities, describes the format as a one page PDF that can be sent in an email, and that is still the right test for whether yours is finished.

When I write one on two sides, the front carries the problem, the solution, the traction and the ask, and the back carries the market, the team and the numbers, so someone who only ever reads the front still knows what you do and what you want from them. Put your strongest number near the top, and if that number is traction, meaning people coming back and paying, it should be the first thing their eye lands on rather than the fifth.

A template, or having it written

A template is fine for the layout, and if your story is clear and you have a decent eye there is nothing wrong with filling one in yourself. What a template cannot do is decide what to leave out, and that is most of the work, since a one-pager is an editing job far more than a writing job. The founders who struggle with it are rarely short of material, they are sitting on far too much of it and cannot see which line earns the reply.

If you would rather have it written, I write and design investor one-pagers, and a two-sided one is $350 and a single-sided one is $225, and if you send me a project brief I reply with a written quote within 2 working days, with no call needed. If you need the deck as well, the full package on the pitch deck page already includes an investor one-pager, so it is worth looking there before buying the two separately.

The mistakes I see most

The most common mistake is cramming, shrinking the font and the margins until the whole deck fits on one page, which defeats the point of having one. If an investor has to squint, they will not, and a page with three numbers they remember beats a page with fifteen they skim past.

The second is leaving out the ask, or tucking it into the last line in small type, when the amount you are raising and what it pays for should be one of the first things an investor sees. I have reviewed plenty of one-pagers where I had to go back to the founder and ask how much they were looking for, and an investor will not bother to ask.

The third is a one-pager that disagrees with the deck, a revenue figure that has moved on, a different raise, a team member who has since left, and investors do notice. SETsquared’s guide makes the same point, asking for the summary to match the deck on the same numbers, KPIs, milestones and language, so check every figure against the deck before either one goes out.

The last is jargon, a page full of phrases that sound impressive and say nothing, when a plain sentence about who pays you and why would do far more for you.

So, which comes first?

Write the deck first, even if you send the one-pager first, since the one-pager is a distillation and you cannot distil a story you have not worked out yet. Then cut it down to one page, check every number against the deck, and send that page to the people you most want to meet, with the deck ready for the moment they ask for it.

Earn the reply with one page, then earn the meeting with the deck.