The pitch deck

How long does an investor look at your deck before the investor decides to meet you? Founders spend weeks on their slides. In 2015, DocSend measured the other side: how long investors spent on the decks of companies that later raised money.

Predict first

In the 2015 DocSend study, investors spent an average of 3 minutes 44 seconds on each visit to a deck. On a 10-slide deck, how many seconds is that for each slide?

Type a guess before you continue. A guess first, even a wrong one, makes the answer easier to remember.

Your guessSave my guess

This lesson shows how to use those seconds well. First comes the one sentence that the investor must understand. Then come the slides, in an order that tells the story.

The deck supports the story

A pitch deck is a short set of slides that explains the company to investors. It supports your story, but it is not the story. Kevin Hale of YC said it plainly: “Investors invest in teams not slides.” A clear deck gets you a meeting. The meeting, the traction, and the team get you the money.

Thus do not start with the slides. Start with the sentence that the slides must prove.

Start with the one-liner

A one-liner is one or two plain sentences that say what the company does, with a specific example if possible. Sequoia tells founders to “define your company in a single declarative sentence.” The first slide of the YC seed deck has the company name and “a one line description of what you do”.

Compare two versions of the same company:

• Weak: “An AI-native orchestration layer for healthcare revenue cycle.”
• Strong: “We check dental patients’ insurance before appointments, so front desks stop spending 2 hours a day on the phone. 40 clinics pay us $300 a month.”

The weak version sounds impressive and says nothing. After you read it, you cannot say who pays or for what. The strong version names the customer, the problem, the result, and the proof. A smart person who knows nothing about dental clinics understands it.

Michael Seibel of YC gives a test. Send your two-sentence description by email to a smart friend. If the friend asks a question, write the description again. Seibel also says: “Make it sound dumber than you think it should.” Clarity is more important than a clever sound.

Practice

Test your one-liner

Write what your company does in one or two plain sentences. A smart friend reads it and asks the first question that comes to mind.

Your one-linerNorthwind is an AI-native procurement intelligence platform that empowers the hospitality ecosystem.

Weak exampleStrong exampleClear

• Two sentences or fewer (you have 1)
• 40 words or fewer, as a guide (you have 12)
• Vague buzzwords: ai-native, platform, ecosystem, empowers, intelligence
• A specific number, such as customers, price, or growth

Your smart friend asks: “What does “ai-native” mean? What do you actually do?”

A question means that the sentence is not yet clear. Write it again, and answer the question inside it.

Worked example · step 1 of 4

Write Northwind's one-liner

1. 1

   Say what the product does, in plain words

   Use a verb that a customer understands, and do not name a category. Northwind: "Northwind checks restaurant invoices against orders."

Show step 2Show all steps

The YC seed deck, slide by slide

Aaron Harris of YC published a seed deck template in 2018. In a YC talk, he said that a seed deck can be “eight slides, maybe ten”. The template has nine slides. Each slide can start a small set of slides. But Harris says that a set of more than three slides is too much for a seed deck.

Before you read the template, put its nine slides in order yourself. Think about what the investor must know before each slide makes sense.

Put it in order

Build a seed deck in nine slides

Put the slides in the order that tells the story best. Then compare your order with the YC seed deck template.

1. 1

   Team
2. 2

   Market
3. 3

   Solution
4. 4

   Title
5. 5

   The ask
6. 6

   Problem
7. 7

   Business model
8. 8

   Traction
9. 9

   Unique insight

Compare with the YC template

Move each slide up or down. Think about what the investor must know before each slide makes sense.

Here is the template, with Northwind’s version of each slide:

Slide	What goes on it	Northwind’s version
1. Title	The company name and the one-liner	Northwind Labs. We check restaurant invoices against orders.
2. Problem	Who has the problem, and what it costs them	Owners pay for food that never arrived and check invoices by hand.
3. Solution	What you make, and how it solves the problem	Northwind reads each invoice and compares it with the order and the delivery.
4. Traction	Revenue, users, growth, and more metrics if you have them	60 restaurants pay $250 a month. Revenue grew 20% a month for six months.
5. Unique insight	What you know that others do not: “what makes you so special”	Why the founders see this problem more clearly than other companies do
6. Business model	Who pays, how much, and how often	A monthly subscription for each restaurant
7. Market	How large the company can become, with the calculation	The count of restaurants that buy from suppliers × $3,000 a year
8. Team	Why these founders can do it	Ada ran a restaurant group. Ben built software for food suppliers.
9. The ask	The amount and what it buys	$3.6M for 24 months, to reach the Series A milestones

Traction comes early for a reason: it is the strongest evidence that you have. If the investor stops after four slides, the investor already knows that customers pay.

The Sequoia outline

Sequoia’s guide “Writing a Business Plan” gives a longer outline with ten sections:

1. Company purpose
2. Problem
3. Solution
4. Why now
5. Market potential
6. Competition and alternatives
7. Business model
8. Team
9. Financials
10. Vision

The two outlines agree on the core: problem, solution, market, business model, and team. Sequoia adds four sections. “Why now” explains what changed in the world that makes the company possible today. “Competition and alternatives” shows what customers use instead. “Financials” and “Vision” show the plan and the large outcome. The current Sequoia page gives no slide count. At seed, you can often put these sections in one sentence on a different slide.

Each slide in approximately 20 seconds

An investor reads a deck quickly, and often alone. Thus each slide must make its point without you in the room. These rules help:

• One point for each slide. The YC Series A guide gives this rule, and it is a good rule at seed too.
• A title that states the point, such as “60 restaurants pay us $250 a month”, not a label such as “Traction”.
• Numbers with a unit and a date, such as “$15K monthly revenue, October 2026”.
• Large text and few words. If a slide has a paragraph, it holds two points.

In a YC talk from approximately 2015, Kevin Hale gave Demo Day founders 2 minutes 30 seconds. He told them to select the “5 to 7 most important ideas” and to cut the rest. The same discipline makes a better deck.

Work it out

An investor spends 3 minutes on your 12-slide deck. On average, how many seconds does each slide get?

Your answerCheck

Work it out

A Demo Day pitch lasts 2 minutes 30 seconds, and you want to make 6 ideas. How many seconds can each idea have?

Your answerCheck

The ask

The ask is the last slide: the amount that you raise and what it buys. Harris’s 2018 template prefers money that makes you “Series A ready” in approximately one year. In 2025, the median wait from seed to Series A was approximately 2.1 years, so many 2026 asks plan for 24 months. The ask connects the money to the plan from the lesson on when to raise and how much.

Northwind’s ask is “$3.6M for 24 months, to reach the Series A milestones”. It names the amount, the time, and the result. An ask such as “$3.6M for growth” gives the investor nothing to judge.

Do you need a different deck to send and to present?

You can use two versions. The version that you send must make sense with no one to explain it, so it has a little more text. The version that you present has less text, because you speak the rest. The facts and the order stay the same in the two versions.

Quiz · question 1 of 5

Test what you learned

Which one-liner passes the smart-friend test?

• A"We are building the future of dental care."
• B"We check dental patients' insurance before appointments, so front desks stop spending 2 hours a day on the phone. 40 clinics pay us $300 a month."
• C"A platform that empowers clinics with seamless, data-driven insurance solutions."
• D"An AI-native orchestration layer for healthcare revenue cycle."