The 10 slides that startups investors want to see and best practices and pitfalls.

1. What investors are looking for
Your 10 slide pitch deck

2. 10 pitch slides
1) Tagline
2) Problem
3) Solution
4) Team
5) Market size
6) Customer
7) Competition
8) Business model
9) Customer acquisition
10)Deal terms

3. Tagline
Tip: Describe what your product or service does to 10 people, then ask them
what the value prop is or how they would describe it when recommending it to a
friend. This is a good way to get to your tagline.
What does your company do in 10
words or less?

4. Problem
What problem are you trying to solve?
Tip: If you have multiple categories of customers, describe the problem for
each category. Make sure the problem is understandable to the lay person.

5. Solution
How is your product / idea going to fix
this problem?
Tip: A clear visual is more helpful than a wall of text. For example, a “here is
what the process flow looks like before our product, here is what is looks like
after our product”.

6. Team
Tip: Have complementary roles that make sense (no co-CEOs), list advisors if
relevant and actually advising. Listing next key hire shows you understand
what skillset your team lacks.
Name
CEO & Co-Founder
Include relevant
experience for this
startup
Name
COO & Co -Founder
Include relevant
experience for this
startup
Name
CTO
Include relevant
experience for this
startup

7. Market size
Total Available Market
Serviceable Addressable Market
Serviceable Obtainable Market
TAM
SAM
SOM
Tip: Don’t worry about having the hugest TAM possible – focus more on truly
knowing what part of the market your startup addresses, and by knowing your
customer really well.

8. Customer
Demographic
• Gender
• Age
• Income
• Location
Psychographic
• Personality
• Interests
• Values
• Lifestyle
Pain point
• Problem solved
• Use case
• Value added
• Message to use
Tip: To understand the market, you have to understand who your customer is
and what pain point you are solving for them.

9. Competition
Dimension 1
Dimension2
Feature Feature Feature Feature
Tip: Don’t only list direct competitors, include indirect competitors. Think “who
else is solving the same problem?”, not “who else is offering a similar product?”
One way to show this is through the “petal diagram”, shown on the next slide

10. Competition
Source: https://steveblank.com/2013/11/08/a-new-way-to-look-at-competitors/

11. Business Model
• How you will make money
• High level P&L
• KPIs / metrics to track
Tip: Don’t just paste your 8 point spreadsheet. Focus on the KPIs that matter
to your business. The response to “how did you come up with that number?”
should be as often as possible “we tested it and here were the results”.

12. Customer acquisition
• What traction do you have (customers,
revenue)?
• How to acquire customers and at what cost?
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Customer lifetime value (CLV)
Tip: Investors are looking for a repeatable, scalable process. It’s better to have
a replicable marketing funnel (even with smaller numbers) than a ton of traction
and no idea how you got there.

13. Customer acquisition
1) Viral Marketing
2) Public Relations (PR)
3) Unconventional PR
4) Search Engine Marketing
5) Social and Display Ads
6) Offline Ads
7) Search Engine Optimization
8) Content Marketing
9) Email Marketing
10) Engineering as Marketing
11) Target Market Blogs
12) Business Development
13) Sales
14) Affiliate Programs
15) Existing Platforms
16) Trade Shows
17) Offline Events
18) Speaking Engagements
19) Community Building
Tip: Make sure you have tested multiple marketing channels – most founders
just go with the ones they are familiar with. The list above is from Traction
(tractionbook.com).

14. Deal terms
• Your cap / valuation
• What you are raising
• How much of the round is raised
Tip: Know the valuation for your ecosystem / market. Check out: Crunchbase
(CB Insights), Halo Report, Pitchbook, and angel.co/valuations

15. Pitching best practices
• Keep it simple
• Know your audience
• Test your pitch
• Pitch beyond the product
• Don’t overly rely on your demo or deck