Pitch DeckFundraisingStartupInvestor RelationsStorytelling
Create Professional Pitch Decks
T. Krause
Build a pitch deck that closes the meeting, not just decorates it. This prompt structures your story, slides, and supporting numbers around what investors and stakeholders actually decide on.
Most pitch decks fail not because the business is weak, but because the deck buries the story. Founders pour weeks into design polish and forget that an investor on slide 4 is asking one question: "Should I keep reading?" If the deck doesn't answer that quickly, the rest of the slides — however beautiful — never get a fair look.
A great pitch deck is structured around a single decision: does this person want to take a meeting, write a check, or make an introduction. Every slide either advances that decision or wastes the reader's attention. This prompt builds your deck around that constraint, sequencing your story so the strongest evidence appears in the first half and supporting detail follows naturally.
What It Does
- Structures a 10–15 slide deck around the standard arc that experienced investors expect, with each slide assigned a clear job and a single message.
- Pulls the strongest evidence from your business — traction, team, market — into the front half of the deck where attention is highest.
- Identifies the weak spots an investor will probe and recommends how to address them in the deck rather than in the Q&A.
The Prompt
#CONTEXT:
I am building a pitch deck for my company. I will share the basics of the business, the audience for the deck (investors, partners, accelerators), and the round or outcome I am pitching for. Your job is to write a complete, slide-by-slide deck outline that tells a tight, persuasive story and addresses the questions a sophisticated reader will have.
#ROLE:
You are a fundraising advisor who has helped over 100 founders raise pre-seed through Series B rounds. You have read thousands of decks and know exactly which slides get glanced at, which get studied, and which get founders rejected. You understand that investors decide on pattern matches in the first 30 seconds and spend the rest of the deck either confirming or breaking that decision.
#RESPONSE GUIDELINES:
1. Begin with a one-sentence positioning statement that captures the company's offer, audience, and differentiation — this becomes the spine of the deck.
2. Build a slide-by-slide outline (10–15 slides) following an investor-friendly arc: problem, solution, market, traction, business model, competition, team, ask.
3. For each slide, specify the slide title, the single message, the supporting evidence or visualization, and the one thing to leave off.
4. Identify the 3 weakest points in my pitch as currently stated and recommend how to address them on the deck rather than waiting for the Q&A.
5. Provide a one-paragraph "executive summary" version of the deck I can paste into an email to land the meeting in the first place.
#PITCH DECK CRITERIA:
1. Each slide makes one point. Slides that try to make three points make none.
2. Concrete numbers always beat adjectives. Replace "rapidly growing market" with the specific number and source.
3. The traction slide must show momentum, not just a metric. A trend line with the right time horizon beats a single big number.
4. The team slide must answer "why this team" — relevant experience or unique insight, not just impressive logos.
5. The ask slide states the round size, the use of funds in 3–4 buckets, and the milestones the funds will deliver — not just a number in isolation.
#INFORMATION ABOUT ME:
- Company name and one-sentence description: [COMPANY]
- Stage and round: [STAGE — e.g., pre-seed, seed, Series A, partner pitch, accelerator]
- Audience for the deck: [AUDIENCE — e.g., institutional VCs, angels, strategic partners]
- Traction to date: [METRICS — revenue, users, growth rate, key partnerships]
- Team and founder background: [TEAM]
- Market and competition: [MARKET_AND_COMPETITION]
- The "why now" thesis: [WHY_NOW]
- Round size and what the money is for: [ASK]
#RESPONSE FORMAT:
Positioning Statement:
[One sentence]
Deck Outline:
Slide 1 — [Title]:
- Single message: [one sentence]
- Supporting evidence: [what goes on the slide]
- Leave off: [what to cut]
Slide 2 — [Title]:
- ...
[Continue through all slides]
Top 3 Pitch Weaknesses to Address:
1. [Weakness] — [How to defuse it on the deck]
2. [Weakness] — [Defusing approach]
3. [Weakness] — [Defusing approach]
Executive Summary (Email Version):
[3–5 sentence summary suitable for the body of an outreach email]
Q&A Anticipation:
- [Likely question 1] — [Recommended answer]
- [Likely question 2] — [Recommended answer]
- [Likely question 3] — [Recommended answer]
How to Use
- Be specific about traction. "Growing fast" produces a generic deck; "revenue grew from $8K to $42K MRR over 9 months with 4% monthly logo churn" produces a deck that closes meetings.
- Be honest about weaknesses. The model can only reframe them on the deck if you name them — and an investor will name them whether you do or not.
- Treat the slide-by-slide outline as a brief, not a script. Hand it to a designer with the supporting evidence and let them turn it into a finished visual deck.
- Build a separate "appendix" deck for detailed financials, technical architecture, and customer references. Keep the main deck focused on the decision; let the appendix support the second meeting.
Example Input
## Information about me
- Company: Loomline — AI-native customer support agent that resolves 70% of tickets without human handoff
- Stage and round: Seed round, raising $3M
- Audience: Institutional seed VCs focused on B2B SaaS and applied AI
- Traction: $34K MRR, 12 paying customers (avg $2.8K/mo), 14% MoM growth over last 6 months, 92% logo retention
- Team: Founder ex-Zendesk product lead (8 years), CTO ex-Anthropic research engineer
- Market and competition: $15B customer support software market; competing with Intercom Fin, Decagon, and incumbent tools adding AI bolt-ons
- Why now: Foundation model accuracy crossed the threshold where 70%+ ticket resolution is reliable; enterprise buyers shifting from chatbots to autonomous agents
- Ask: $3M for 18 months — primarily go-to-market hires, some R&D on agent reliability
Tips
- Open with the strongest evidence you have. If traction is your edge, lead with it. If team is your edge, lead with that. The conventional ordering is a default, not a rule.
- Replace every adjective with a number. "Large market," "experienced team," "fast-growing" are all signals of weak slides — they are the words founders use when they don't have specifics.
- One message per slide, in the title. A reader who only reads the slide titles should still get the full story. If they can't, you have not written titles — you have written labels.
- Pre-empt the obvious objections. Every business has 2–3 weaknesses an investor will spot in 30 seconds. Address them on the deck and you signal self-awareness; ignore them and you signal naivety.
- Send the executive summary first, the deck second. A deck attached to a cold email rarely gets opened. A 4-sentence summary that earns a "send the deck" reply gets read.