Pitch deck: how many slides, and what to say on each

The question comes up every time: how many slides? The short answer fits on one line. The useful answer is knowing what each slide has to do, and above all what you say while it is on screen.

The simple rule

• Investor meeting (20 to 30 minutes): 10 to 12 slides, plus an appendix.
• Timed pitch (3 to 5 minutes): demo day, competition, incubator panel: 5 to 7 slides.
• Elevator pitch (30 seconds to 1 minute): no slides.

The 12 slides of an investor deck

1. Title: the name, one sentence saying what you do. You, meanwhile: your hook, not "Hello, my name is...".
2. Problem: who suffers, from what, what it costs. Tell a concrete case; the slide shows the number.
3. Solution: what you do, in one sentence and one image of the product.
4. Product: a screenshot or a short demo. Show, do not describe.
5. Market: the size of the market you can realistically reach, not the worldwide figure.
6. Business model: who pays, how much, how often.
7. Traction: your best numbers, with a curve if it goes up. If you have numbers, this is where they go.
8. Competition: where you stand and why you win. Avoid "we have no competitors".
9. Go-to-market: how you find customers, and what it costs.
10. Team: why you, why now. One line of credibility per person.
11. Financial projections: three years, the big lines.
12. The ask: how much you are raising, for what, up to which milestone. End on that sentence, out loud, and stop talking.

The deck for a 3-minute pitch

Keep the essentials: problem, solution (with the product), traction, team, ask. Add the market or the business model only if the panel expects them. The detail of this format is in the guide to preparing a demo day or competition pitch.

What you say matters more than what you show

The judges will rarely remember your slides. They will remember a story, a number and an impression: yours. Three stage rules so the deck serves you instead of replacing you:

• Never read the slide. The audience reads faster than you speak. Say what is not written: the context, the why, the example.
• Talk to the audience, not the screen. Glance at the slide for a second to get your bearings, then come back to the people.
• Change slides on a sentence, not on an awkward silence. The transition is part of the text: "And this is how we solved that problem."

The most common mistakes

• Too much text, in a small font, that nobody reads.
• A market slide with a worldwide figure that says nothing about your target.
• The ask forgotten, or said too fast, at the very end of your time.
• A deck designed before the speech: you end up commenting on slides instead of telling a story. Write what you are going to say first, then build the slides that prove it.

If your deck is ready but the speech is not there yet, that is exactly what we work on in pitch coaching: writing for the ear, then rehearsals, deck in hand. For a first overview of the whole process, read how to make a pitch, step by step.

To go further, read how to structure an investor pitch and the questions investors ask after a pitch.