Pitch Deck

When to Use

The founder is preparing a pitch deck for a fundraising round (pre-seed through Series A).
The founder has an existing deck and wants structural or narrative feedback.
The founder asks what slides to include or how to tell their story to investors.

Context Required

From startup-context: company one-liner, stage, product description, target customer, business model, traction metrics, team bios, fundraising history, and competitive landscape. If any of these are missing, prompt the founder before drafting slides.

From the user: target round size, target investor type (VC vs. angel), whether this is for a live pitch (fewer words, more visuals) or a send-ahead deck (more self-explanatory text).

Workflow

Read startup context — Pull from .agents/startup-context.md to populate slide content. Flag any gaps.
Determine deck type — Ask if this is a live-pitch deck (visual-heavy, 30-40 words per slide max) or a send-ahead deck (can include more explanatory text, 60-80 words per slide).
Draft the narrative arc — Before writing any slides, outline the story: what is the world like today (problem), what changes with your product (solution), why now, why this team, and what you need to get there.
Write slide-by-slide content — Produce content for each of the 10-12 slides below. Each slide gets a title, key message, supporting points, and a suggested visual or data element.
Review for investor lens — Check every slide against the question an investor would ask at that point. Flag weak spots.
Produce final output — Deliver the deck outline as structured markdown. If the user wants a .pptx, chain to the Anthropic pptx skill after content is finalized.

Output Format

Structured markdown with one H3 per slide. Each slide section contains:

Title: The slide headline (concise, assertion-style, e.g., "Healthcare billing wastes $200B annually")
Key message: The one thing the audience should remember from this slide
Content: Bullet points or narrative text
Visual suggestion: What chart, image, screenshot, or diagram belongs here
Investor question this answers: The implicit question in the VC's mind

Frameworks & Best Practices

The 10-12 Slide Framework

#	Slide	Purpose	Common Mistakes
1	Title / Hook	Company name, one-liner, and a memorable hook stat or image	Burying the one-liner; using a generic tagline
2	Problem	Make the pain visceral and specific to your ICP	Being too abstract; citing a problem everyone already knows
3	Solution	Show what you built and how it eliminates the pain	Feature-dumping; not connecting back to the problem
4	Demo / Product	Screenshot, GIF, or live product walkthrough	Showing the admin panel instead of the user-facing magic
5	Market Size	TAM/SAM/SOM with a credible bottoms-up calculation	Using only top-down "the market is $X trillion" numbers
6	Business Model	How you make money, unit economics, pricing	Not showing actual or projected unit economics
7	Traction	The chart that goes up and to the right	Vanity metrics; hiding the Y-axis; mixing timeframes
8	Competition	Why you win — positioning matrix or comparison table	Claiming "no competitors"; using a 2x2 where you magically own the top-right
9	Team	Founders + key hires, relevant backgrounds	Listing every employee; not explaining founder-market fit
10	Go-to-Market	How you acquire customers today and at scale	Saying "we'll go viral" without a concrete channel strategy
11	Financials / Ask	How much you're raising, use of funds, key projections	Not specifying what milestones the money unlocks
12	Closing / Vision	The big dream — where this goes in 5-10 years	Being too conservative; forgetting contact info

Narrative Arc Rules

Slide 1-3: Establish tension. The audience should feel the problem before you show the answer.
Slide 4-7: Build credibility. Prove you have a real product with real traction in a real market.
Slide 8-10: Prove defensibility. Show you can win against alternatives and scale.
Slide 11-12: Make the ask and paint the vision. End with ambition, not logistics.

Stage-Specific Guidance

Pre-seed / Seed: Emphasize problem depth, founder-market fit, and early signals (waitlist, LOIs, design partners). Financial projections can be lighter.
Series A: Emphasize repeatable go-to-market, unit economics, and a clear path from current traction to 3-5x growth. Investors expect real revenue data.

Principles

Every slide title should be an assertion, not a label. "We grew 30% MoM for 6 months" beats "Traction".
Remove any slide that does not advance the narrative. If you cannot articulate why a slide exists, cut it.
The deck should be understandable by a partner who reads it at 11pm on their iPad without you presenting.
Use no more than 3 fonts and 2 brand colors. Clutter kills credibility.
Data beats adjectives. Replace "fast-growing" with "3x YoY".

Related Skills

investor-research — use before building the deck to tailor the narrative to specific investor interests
data-room — prepare the backup materials investors will request after seeing the deck
fundraising-email — write the outreach email that accompanies the deck

Examples

Example prompt: "Help me build a seed deck. We're raising $3M for an AI-powered contract review tool for mid-market legal teams. We have $40K MRR and 12 paying customers."

Good output snippet (Problem slide):

Slide 2: Problem

Title: Mid-market legal teams review 500+ contracts/month with 1990s tools Key message: Contract review is the #1 time sink for legal teams at companies with 200-2,000 employees, costing $180K+/year in paralegal hours per company. Content:

73% of mid-market companies still use manual redlining in Word

Average contract review takes 45 minutes; 30 minutes is repetitive clause checking

Errors in reviewed contracts cost companies 2-5% of deal value annually Visual suggestion: Side-by-side showing a paralegal buried in Word docs vs. your product highlighting risks in seconds Investor question this answers: Is this a real, painful, expensive problem?

Example prompt: "Review my existing deck — I keep getting passed on after the first meeting."

Good output approach: Read the deck, identify which of the 12 slides are missing or weak, check if the narrative arc has tension, and test every slide against the investor-question framework. Deliver specific rewrites, not vague advice.

pitch-deck