I’ve created a lot of pitch decks, teaser decks, business plans, and financial models while working with startups over the last 12+ years. It’s given me a few strong opinions on what matters most.
There’s no gatekeeping when it comes to information on creating a good pitch deck. You can find resources all over the internet: Excellent guides on designing a pitch deck, what slides to include, how to format an elevator pitch using just the right words, and much more.
One big issue I have with most of this guidance, though: Authors tend to focus on the format and leave out the strategy.
I see evidence of this gap at pitch competitions, with clients, and at incubators where I work with seed-stage startups. Founders come to the table with pitch decks that “check the box” on what investors say they want. But, at the end of the day, they don’t get funded. Because despite fitting neatly into the “good pitch deck” mold, they fail to get VCs excited. They fail to communicate that the startup is a likely unicorn worth investment.
Hence this blog series. This is my attempt to share the strategic guidance I give startups on making pitches compelling. Hopefully, this helps others rethink their pitch and connect with more investors!
Before getting started, a disclaimer! I won’t talk about formatting in this series. If you’ve never created a pitch deck before, you should check out the YCombinator’s How to Build Your Seed Round Pitch Deck article before progressing to these strategic tips!

#1 — Your pitch: Make it simple. Make it make sense.

Your pitch is the driving force of your deck. It needs to be clear, to the point, exciting, and it needs to encapsulate the essential aspects of your business.
In other words, it’s often the hardest part of the deck to get right.
Businesses are messy, and business ideas are even messier. When you fall in love with an idea as a founder, your brain gets wrapped up in the inspiration of what’s possible, how you could make it happen, what the business might look like five years down the road, and all the directions it could go. So much is uncertain and exciting in the ideation stage, and it can be challenging to pick just one direction to focus.
But if you don’t focus, your idea won’t make any sense to investors and you’ll never get the funding you need to make your dream a reality. So it’s time to ruthlessly cut and simplify.
I have 2 techniques to make this easier for startups to achieve. The first is to do a Shrinking Pitch.
Start by answering the following question in as many words as you’d like: “What is your company, what does it do, for whom, and how?”
Next, do it again, but limit yourself to 280 characters. Now, shrink your explanation down to one sentence. Now, cut that sentence down to seven words. Now three. Finally, pick just one word.
The Shrinking Pitch forces you to identify your business’s most essential defining characteristics and to express them in the simplest way possible. You can use your one-sentence, seven-word, three-word, and one-word ‘pitches’ to anchor your pitch deck content in what matters most.
The second technique I use is Draft First, Final Last. Meaning, it will be the first draft we create and will be the final element we complete.
For any deck I help create, we start with a rough draft of the company pitch as the very first step of the process. It helps get everyone on the same page about what we’re trying to work toward with the rest of the deck. The pitch gets continuously refined as the rest of the deck is built. Then, when everything else is complete and we’re finally ready to speak with our first investor, we edit the pitch one last time.
The pitch is the most critical part of the deck, so it needs to be the most carefully reviewed and refined. It should perfectly encapsulate the most important aspects of your business.

#2 — Think about the Jockey, the Horse, and the Track

One of my favorite NYU Entrepreneurial Finance professors, Alexander Ljungqvist, used to describe how investors evaluate startups as if it were a horse race. He said each VC judges startups primarily by one component: the Jockey, the Horse, or the Track.
Investors that care about the Jockey care most about the startup team (its founders and early employees). They ask questions like, How much experience does this team have? Have they run a successful startup before? Do they have credibility or experience in this industry? Do I like them?
Investors who focus on the Horse care most about the product or idea. Is there an excellent product/market fit? Is it a billion-dollar idea? Does it sound cool?
Investors will focus on a startup’s chosen market and its attractiveness if they care about the Track. Is the market growing? Is it asset-light, and does it have good margins? Is it ripe for disruption? Are there few competitors and/or large moats to competition?
In truth, most VCs I’ve met care about all 3! But regardless of their individual preferences, the framework is helpful because it describes all aspects of your business a VC might focus on most. Meaning this: You can use The Jockey, the Horse, and the Track as a checklist for your pitch deck, and your goal should be to show that you’re absolutely amazing in all three.
Show that your team is the best team in the world to execute this particular startup idea in this market. What about their background makes them uniquely likely to succeed? Prove that your product or idea is brilliant, exactly what customers want, and will undoubtedly work. And prove that this market is super attractive — that it’s big, growing, and that your startup will be in a fantastic position to compete within it.
Of course, most startups are stronger in some of these elements than they are in others.
That’s okay! As long as you hit it out of the park in at least one or two of them, it’s okay to be just adequate in the others. But when building your deck, you should push yourself to go as far as you can to express why each of these elements — The Jockey, the Horse, and the Track — is as strong as it can be.

#3 — Credibility = trust

Credibility is the currency that sets fundable startups apart from unfundable startup ideas.
Think about it from an investor perspective: Most startups don’t work out. Pitches make promises of billion-dollar sales, IPOs, acquisitions (though this isn’t the ideal exit for a VC! More about this in a future blog post…), and huge returns. But the majority of startups don’t deliver. In other words, they’re fakes.
Okay, “fakes” is an exaggerated word. Startups that fail are entirely normal, and most have great intentions. But assuming this perspective of a suspicious investor is a great way to get into the mindset of what kinds of credibility signals or proof you should include in your deck. What will it take to put a suspicious investor’s mind at ease? What data can you provide that indicates it’s more likely you’re one of the good ones? One of the unicorns?
Credibility is sometimes included in a pitch deck’s “Traction” section. But pitch decks can incorporate evidence of credibility in nearly every slide.
Examples of credibility:

• Strong signals: Founders who’ve been funded before with good exits, all-star team members and advisors who chose your startup over others, big-name customer
• Medium strength: Partnerships with big-name brands, early sales traction, LOIs from big customers, profitability
• Low strength: Awards, patents (unless highly strategic), newsletter signups

What you’re trying to prove:

• Other smart, powerful people have bought into your startup
• Customers want your product
• You are better positioned in the market than your competitors

Look out for Part 2!

There’s a lot to consider when building a winning pitch deck! So much so that I’m breaking this blog into a Part 1 and Part 2 for the sake of all our sanity :)
Stay tuned for my next 3 tips on creating a pitch deck that actually works:

• Is your problem on fire?
• Make a bet
• Make it “Just add money”

And in the meantime, if you or someone you know could use help putting together a strong pitch, reach out to my team at info@laurenpearlconsulting.com. We’d love to help!