- Founder's Formula
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- All About Pitch Decks
Decided to shake things up a bit and hit you all with a themed newsletter all around pitch decks! We’re thinking of doing one themed issue per month. Let us know your thoughts if something like that would be useful!
Let’s dive in:
#1
If you want to raise funds, master your pitch deck.
• No crazy demo
• No fancy template
• No expensive softwareHere’s how you actually create a killer deck (and close $10M a year):
— MATT GRAY (@matt_gray_)
12:30 PM • May 5, 2024
There’s a good amount of tweets on X and I found this one to be the most helpful and practical. It does just enough to give you great insights, but not throw too much at you so you feel overwhelmed.
TLDR is: keep it simple, limit it to 10-15 slides and storytelling is key.
#2
It's done! I read 3,000 startup pitch decks.
I wanted to find what the incredible pitches had in common.
Was there a "secret ingredient" unifying them?
YES. The 4 best (that VCs wanted intros to) had the same talking point:
— Julian Shapiro (@Julian)
6:52 PM • Nov 4, 2024
Okay, this goes into a bit more detail than that first tweet and gets you thinking like a Marketer. The key insight pulled here that winning decks answered this effectively:
“What is your unique approach to scalably and convincingly getting in front of customers?”
It’s hard to think like a Marketer when you’re in the Founder’s seat. But distribution is key for VCs to throw money down.
“Most startups die not because founders are bad or products suck, but because they couldn't figure out how to get anyone to try them.”
If you can beat your competitors to the hearts of your customers you can win. Easy as that. So make sure your deck tackles how you’re going to land customers both early and at scale.
#3
Dropbox's first pitch deck:
@drewhouston founded @Dropbox 18 years ago
After @ycombinator S07 Demo Day, Dropbox raised a $1.2M seed led by @sequoia with this deck
Back then, people were using flash drives & email to share files!
Dropbox set out to change that: x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Pitch Decks (@pitchdecks)
10:10 PM • Jan 9, 2025
The second most iconic pitch decks of all time and it’s here with great analysis by the post’s author.
Noticed how they covered customer acquisition early 😉
#4
I see a bunch of founders now put their pitch decks in their Twitter / LI profiles (using Docsend) Seems clever and to the point. Aside from soliciting issues, I don’t hate it. Thoughts?
— Jenny Fielding (@jefielding)
1:58 AM • Jan 14, 2025
Okay, I’m on the fence about this. But it could be a good idea nonetheless. On one hand - it gives you the chance of random luck of a VC seeing your pitch deck and wanting to connect.
On the other hand - you lose privacy and a competitor can see where you have an edge and adjust accordingly.
What are your thoughts?!
#5
the pitch deck the product
— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan)
12:50 AM • Feb 29, 2024
LMAO I still remember the buzz this generated when people got scammed. So fitting for this issue.
Feel free to share your thoughts on this issue! If there’s any topics you’d like to know about as a Founder let us know and we’ll get to work to cover it.