Pitch Deck Structure: What to Put on Each Slide

A strong pitch deck follows a simple structure: problem, solution, why now, market, product, traction, business model, go-to-market, competition, team, financials and the ask. Each slide answers one question an investor has, in an order that builds a case for why this company can become large and why this team will make it happen. Ten to fifteen focused slides usually do the job better than thirty detailed ones.

The structure below is a starting point, not a law. Move slides around when your story demands it; for example, lead with traction if it is your strongest argument.

The pitch deck structure at a glance

#	Slide	The question it answers
1	Title	Who are you and what do you do, in one line?
2	Problem	What painful, frequent problem exists, and for whom?
3	Solution	How do you solve it, and why is your approach better?
4	Why now	What has changed that makes this possible or urgent now?
5	Market	How big can this get, and how do you know?
6	Product	What does it look like in practice?
7	Traction	What evidence shows it is working?
8	Business model	How do you make money, and what do unit economics look like?
9	Go-to-market	How will you reach customers repeatably?
10	Competition	Who else solves this, and why will you win?
11	Team	Why are you the people to build this?
12	Financials	What do the next 18 to 24 months look like?
13	The ask	How much are you raising and what will it achieve?

Slide by slide

1. Title slide

Company name, a one-line description of what you do, and contact details. The one-liner should be plain: "Accounting software for independent pharmacies" beats "Reimagining the future of financial wellbeing". If an investor only reads this slide, they should know which category you are in.

2. Problem

Describe a specific person with a specific problem. Show how they handle it today and what that costs them in time, money or risk. Customer quotes from your own interviews are powerful here, provided they are real and you have permission to use them. If you are still collecting that evidence, how to validate a startup idea covers how to run those conversations.

Weak: "Small businesses struggle with finances." Stronger: "Independent pharmacies reconcile insurance payments by hand each week; owners we interviewed described it as one of their most tedious recurring tasks."

3. Solution

Show how your product removes the problem. Focus on the outcome for the customer, not on the technology. One clear diagram or screenshot often explains more than a paragraph.

4. Why now

Investors want to know why this has not been done before, or why previous attempts failed. Typical answers are a technology shift, a regulatory change, a change in customer behaviour or a cost curve that crossed a threshold. Be specific and verifiable.

5. Market

Avoid the "if we get 1% of a huge market" argument. Build the market size bottom-up: number of potential customers you can identify, multiplied by what each would realistically pay per year. Show the segment you start with and how it expands.

Example: 6,000 target businesses in your first region × €3,000 annual contract value = €18 million initial serviceable market, with a path to adjacent regions and products. Label clearly where your customer count comes from.

6. Product

Screenshots, a short flow or a demo link. Show the moment where the customer gets value. Keep text to a minimum.

7. Traction

This is often the slide investors look at first. Show the metric that best proves demand at your stage: revenue, active users, retention cohorts, pilot customers, letters of intent or a waitlist with engagement data. Show a trend over time, not a single number, and label axes and time periods clearly.

If your traction is early, be honest about it and show the rate of learning instead: experiments run, conversion rates, what changed as a result.

8. Business model

How you charge, how much, and what a customer is worth over time. At seed, even rough unit economics help: average revenue per account, gross margin, expected churn and customer acquisition cost. The SaaS unit economics calculator is a quick way to check whether your LTV and CAC assumptions are consistent, and startup financial metrics explains which numbers investors usually ask for.

9. Go-to-market

Explain how you acquire customers and why that channel will scale. Name the channels you have tested and what you learned. For a deeper framework, see go-to-market strategy for startups.

10. Competition

Every startup has competition, even if it is a spreadsheet or "doing nothing". A simple table or two-axis chart works, as long as the axes reflect what customers actually care about. Never claim there is no competition; it signals that you have not looked.

11. Team

Show the founders and key people with the experience that makes them credible for this specific problem. One or two lines per person is enough. If there are gaps (for example, no technical co-founder), say how you will fill them.

12. Financials

A summary of revenue, costs and burn for the next 18 to 24 months, plus the key assumptions behind it. Keep the full model in a spreadsheet you can share on request. Investors want to see that you understand your cost structure and how long the money will last.

13. The ask

How much you are raising, on which instrument, and what milestones the money will reach. A simple use-of-funds breakdown helps:

Use of funds	Share
Product and engineering	55%
Sales and marketing	30%
Operations and buffer	15%

Whether to state a valuation in the deck is a judgement call; many founders leave it for the conversation. Before any meeting, know what different valuations would mean for your ownership. You can calculate this in seconds with the post-money valuation calculator, and how much equity to give up in a seed round helps you decide what range is acceptable.

Two versions of the same deck

	Send deck	Presentation deck
Purpose	Read alone, without you	Supports you speaking
Text	Full sentences, self-explanatory	Short headlines, visuals
Length	Can be slightly longer	As short as possible
Appendix	Optional detail slides	Kept in reserve for questions

Design rules that help

• One message per slide. Write the takeaway as the slide headline, for example "Revenue grew every month since launch", not "Traction".
• Readable at a glance. Large font sizes, high contrast, no dense paragraphs.
• Consistent numbers. Every figure in the deck should match your model and your data room.
• Real visuals. Product screenshots and charts from your own data beat stock photos.
• Label everything. Time periods, currencies and whether numbers are actuals or forecasts.

Common pitch deck mistakes

Burying the traction. If you have strong numbers, do not hide them on slide 11.

Top-down market sizing only. A large market figure without a bottom-up calculation does not convince.

Vague asks. "Raising a seed round" is not an ask. "Raising €1.2 million to reach €50,000 monthly recurring revenue and hire three engineers" is.

Inconsistent numbers. A burn rate on one slide that does not match the runway on another undermines trust.

Unverifiable claims. Every claim, from market size to customer quotes, should be something you can back up when asked.

Too much text. If a slide needs a paragraph to make sense, it probably needs a better headline and a simpler visual.

Checklist before you send it

• The one-liner on the title slide is clear to a non-expert
• The problem slide names a specific customer and a real pain
• Traction shows a trend with labelled time periods
• Market size is built bottom-up with stated assumptions
• Unit economics are consistent with your financial model
• The ask states amount, instrument and milestones
• All numbers match your model and data room
• File name and title include your company name; the PDF is a reasonable size
• Someone outside your company has read it without you and understood it

The pitch deck is one part of a fundraise. For the process around it, from building an investor list to closing, see the startup fundraising guide.