What should you lead with in a pitch deck?

Your strongest, hardest-to-argue-with point. For most founders that is traction: users who come back, revenue, retention. If you have it and it is impressive, put it near the front, not on slide eight.

How long should a pitch deck be, and how much do investors read?

Short and easy to digest. An investor skims a deck in a couple of minutes to decide whether to meet you, and they get bored reading like anyone else, so lead cleanly and let whoever wants detail dig in.

Should you put the amount you are raising on the deck?

Yes. State how much you want and show where it will be spent. Making an investor guess the ask is a common and avoidable mistake.

What do investors actually read in a pitch deck?

The order matters more than the design. If you have real traction, it does not belong on slide eight.

The single biggest mistake I see on a pitch deck is a founder hiding their best card. They will have real traction, actual users, actual revenue, something genuinely impressive, and they bury it on slide eight, behind the mission statement and the market-size chart and the team photos. If you have got traction and it is impressive, it should be one of the first things an investor sees, big and clear, not something they have to dig for.

Because here is what an investor is actually doing when they open your deck. They are skimming, fast, deciding in a couple of minutes whether you are worth a meeting, and they get bored reading just like everyone else, so it has to be easy to digest. Your deck is not a business plan in portrait, and it is not a prospectus in landscape. It is a story, told cleanly, with just enough on the page for them to lean in and ask for more.

I spent years on the other side of this, cutting my teeth in asset management putting together the prospectuses and the term sheets and the investor communications, and I have written and designed a great many decks since. The ones that work are almost never the ones with the most on them.

Lead with the thing that is hardest to argue with

For most founders that is traction, and I mean the real stuff, users who come back and use the thing again and again, revenue, retention, a waitlist that is actually growing. That is what starts to interest investors, because you do not get funded for an idea, you get funded for evidence. So if you have it, it goes at the front. If you do not have it yet, lead with the sharpest version of the problem and why you are the person to solve it, and be honest that the traction is still to come.

Be blunt about the ask

If you are raising, say how much, clearly, on the deck. I have reviewed plenty where I have had to stop and ask the founder, so if I were an investor sitting here ready to invest, how much are you actually looking for, because it was nowhere on the page. Do not make them guess. State the number, and show where it goes, which is a whole subject of its own that I have written about in how much should you raise.

Keep it clean, and cut the stock photos

I am all for clean decks. Clear titles and subtitles, a sensible hierarchy, the message doing the work, and anyone who wants more detail can come in and find it. What I do not want is a deck drowning in infographics, or stock photos of some group of people huddled around a PowerPoint laptop, because that adds nothing and it makes you look like everyone else. And do not pad it with names for the sake of it either, because stacking the deck with advisors and logos just to have them there gets old fast, and serious investors will look at those names and quietly judge whether they actually mean anything.

So, before you send it

A good deck is short, it is honest, and it leads with your strongest card. If that card is traction, and you have got it, then put it where they will see it. Slide two, not slide eight. And if you are not yet sure whether you even need a polished deck or a fuller document, that is worth reading do you actually need a business plan first.

Show them your best card first. Do not make them hunt for it.