Over the last six months, I’ve written up 25 Pitch Deck Teardowns — the popular series of articles where I review a pitch deck in detail, celebrating the wins and gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) suggesting improvements. We’ve seen 74-slide decks (yes, really), decks that are riddled with spelling mistakes and bogged down by hideous design (but still work incredibly well), and decks where the founders don’t fully seem to understand what market they are in.
For every deck I reviewed for my TechCrunch series, I saw dozens of other decks as well. Don’t tell my bosses, but I have a side hustle as a pitch coach, and through that, I see a lot of decks. I also am friends with a bunch of lovely VCs and accelerators who often forward decks for me to take a look at. I have a folder with hundreds and hundreds of pitch decks, ranging from $10,000 angel rounds to multibillion-dollar deals in progress. People on occasion send me screenshots of slides, too (I like to think of those as “unsolicited deck pics.” Ahem.)
In any case, I have long since lost count, but I’ve probably seen a few thousand pitch decks over the past few years. Suffice it to say: I have opinions about ’em.
In this post, I want to break down the top 11 (yes, it had to be 11) most common mistakes I see in pitch decks, along with a bunch of examples of how these mistakes show up.
Oh, and if you want to submit your own deck for a potential pitch deck teardown, you’re in luck: Instructions are here.
Let’s gooooo.
Not knowing your audience
A pitch is a story, and stories have audiences. You wouldn’t put a child in front of Arnold Schwarzenegger hacking and slashing his way through various parts of the Predator. Similarly, the story you use to sell to your customers is not the same story that you need to get across to your would-be investor audience.
You need to understand how VC works; that’s non-negotiable. If you don’t, it means that you have no way of knowing how to tell your story, and you don’t truly understand what they are buying. Get that resolved for yourself!
Examples of decks that get this right:
Examples of decks that get this wrong:
- Boxedup’s $2.3M seed deck
- WayRay’s $80M Series C deck
- Enduring Planet’s $2.1M seed deck
- Simba Chain’s $25M Series A deck
Not fully understanding your market sizing
It’s painful to read a pitch deck and realize that the founders have no idea how to size their own market. At the earliest stage, your company needs to prove exactly two things:
- Can you build a venture-scale business in this market?
- Is this the right team to build that business?
The way you answer the first question is by having sensible things to say about the market you operate in, and how you see the size and trajectory of that market. If you fail to do that, guess what — you’re proving that you’re not a good founder, and you’re probably not the right team to build the business.
Yes, calculating the TAM, SAM and SOM for your market can be really hard, and sometimes it involves assumptions and guesswork, but that’s OK — you’re not getting graded on how accurate your numbers are but on how you view and think about the market you are in. If the numbers are “wrong,” but you can defend why you thought about them this way, it tells your potential investors a lot about your quality as a founder.
Examples of decks that get this right:
- Minut’s $15M Series B deck
- Boxedup’s $2.3M seed deck
- Glambook’s $2.5M seed deck
- Front’s $65M Series D deck
- Rokoko’s $3M strategic extension deck
- Vori’s $10M Series A deck
Examples of decks that get this wrong:
- Palau Project’s $125K pre-seed deck
- Boxedup’s $2.3M seed deck
- Wilco’s $7M seed deck
- Glambook’s $2.5M seed deck
- Mi Terro’s $1.5M seed deck
- Helu.io’s $9.8M Series A deck
- Supliful’s $1M seed deck
Bad competition slides
As a startup, you absolutely, definitely have competitors. They are going to be nipping at your heels every chance they get. Much like the market sizing above, this is one of those slides where you, as a founder, get to show off how deeply and comprehensively you understand your market.
If you’re missing big and obvious competitors, you’d best be prepared to defend why that is. And if you include weird, unusual or unexpected competitors, that doesn’t mean you are “wrong,” per se, but as an investor, I’d want to know why you made those considerations.
The most obvious trap here is to say you don’t have competitors. That’s almost always incorrect. When Henry Ford mass produced the first car, his competitors were horses and hand-built cars. Your customers are currently paying to solve the problem you are offering to solve for them; sometimes in time, sometimes in frustration, sometimes by using other products. List those. If you can’t think of any, well, I’ve got really bad news for you: If people aren’t willing to pay to solve a problem, there’s no business for you to run.
Examples of decks that get this right:
Examples of decks that get this wrong:
- Lunchbox’s $50M Series B deck
- Enduring Planet’s $2.1M seed deck
- Mi Terro’s $1.5M seed deck
- Front’s $65M Series D deck
Unclear value proposition
As a company, you have a value proposition; you are creating value for your customers. Part of your narrative will be to nail the story around how you think about your customers and how they think about you. The basic truth you are getting to is that the value you create for your customers is greater than the amount of money you charge them, and therefore they are willing to part with their cash to buy your product or service.
Examples of decks that get this right:
Examples of decks that get this wrong:
Unclear founder/market fit
Investors see hundreds, maybe thousands, of startups every year. It’s extremely unlikely that you are doing something that nobody else has ever thought of doing before. I like to ask three questions to the founders I work with:
- Why you?
- Why this?
- Why now?
I’ll get back to the “why now?” in just a moment, but the first two describe the founder-market fit. What do you have that is unique, special, unusual or otherwise an unfair advantage over anybody else who is trying to start this company? If you can’t think of anything: Why are you starting this company?
Examples of decks that get this right:
Examples of decks that get this wrong:
- Palau Project’s $125K pre-seed deck
- Alto Pharmacy’s $200M Series E deck
- Party Round’s $7M pre-seed deck
- Rokoko’s $3M strategic extension deck
The time is now
Another thing some decks fail to answer is the “why now?” question. Often, there are macroeconomic shifts, technology innovations or other things that have happened that meant that it wasn’t possible or feasible to start a particular startup until now.
One example is consumer-grade quadcopter drones. They became possible only because smartphones came along and made gyroscopes, controllers, and small, compact cameras far cheaper than they had ever been before. If your company is dependent on one of these things, make sure to highlight that in your pitch. Similarly, if economic or regulatory shifts increase the urgency of your company, weave that into your story as well.
Remember that if your company could have been started a decade ago, chances are that somebody did. Find out who and what happened to those companies. Their failures could teach you something about what not to do — and employees who used to work at those companies, who have already been working on problems in your market, could potentially make for a great hire at some point in the future.
Examples of decks that get this right:
Examples of decks that get this wrong:
Failing to explain traction
Traction is a big one. In fact, if you have great traction, your deck doesn’t need much else. Is your team garbage? Doesn’t matter; you got traction. Is your product average at best? Who cares — people are paying you for it anyway. Is the market unlikely and weird? Meh, doesn’t matter; you’re making the dollars.
If you have traction, think about how to tell the story of where that traction came from and how you’re going to grow it in the future.
Examples of decks that get this right:
- Minut’s $15M Series B deck
- Dutch’s $20M Series A deck
- Boxedup’s $2.3M seed deck
- Glambook’s $2.5M seed deck
- Palau Project’s $125K pre-seed deck
Examples of decks that get this wrong:
- Encore’s $3M seed deck
- WayRay’s $80M series C deck
- Arkive’s $9.7M seed deck
- Alto Pharmacy’s $200M Series E deck
- Five Flute’s $1.2M pre-seed deck
- Simba Chain’s $25M Series A deck
Not having a clear call to action/ask
If you’re raising money, you’re doing that to accomplish something. An investor is going to want to know why: What are the milestones you’re going to hit? When? How much will it cost you? Are you raising an appropriate-sized round?
Examples of decks that get this right:
Examples of decks that get this wrong:
- Minut’s $15M Series B deck
- Lumigo’s $29M Series A deck
- Ergeon’s $40M Series B deck
- Vori’s $10M Series A deck
Fuzzy business model
You’re a startup, running a business. At some point, you’re going to have to make money, and to do that, you need to understand how you are going to make money. Even as I’m typing this, I’m feeling like I’m saying something really obvious, but it turns out that a huge number of startups are operating on the “let’s get some eyeballs, then worry about how to monetize it later” theory. That may have worked in the heyday of 2019, when you could throw a bucket on a rope in any direction, reel it back in and find a load of cash. Those days are gone; businesses need to have a path to revenue, then profitability. If you don’t, you’re doing it wrong.
At the very least, you need a plan. Your plan can change. The premises under your plan may be wrong. All of that is OK — you can always make a plan B or plan C if your first plan fails. What you don’t get to do, however, is “figure it out later.” Figure it out now, and put the answer to what your business model is going to look like in your pitch deck.
Examples of decks that get this right:
Examples of decks that get this wrong:
Storytelling/order of slides
If you are pitching your story, your slides don’t have to make 100% sense. You will be there to give a voice-over with context, nuance and the full story. The problem is, a lot of the time, your deck needs to stand on its own. It will be emailed to investors before you get to talk to them. It may be passed around the venture firm as they are trying to decide whether to take another meeting or as they are trying to make an investment decision.
You need to be able to give your pitch deck to someone who doesn’t know anything about your business, your market, your industry or you. It still needs to make sense. Yes, really. I know it’s hard, but you can do it, and if you can’t, get some help to figure it out, because it’s the No. 1 mistake I see in pitch decks; they really need to do a lot of heavy lifting to ensure that the reader can follow the story you’re trying to tell.
Examples of decks that get this right:
- Momentum’s $5M seed deck
- Lumigo’s $29M Series A deck
- Encore’s $3M seed deck
- Alto Pharmacy’s $200M Series E deck
- Mi Terro’s $1.5M seed deck
Examples of decks that get this wrong:
- Palau Project’s $125K pre-seed deck
- Dutch’s $20M Series A deck
- Arkive’s $9.7M seed deck
- Rokoko’s $3M strategic extension deck
Oh, and get that damn operating plan already
I was going to have this in the No. 1 spot, but if you’ve read any of my pitch deck teardowns, you see that the vast majority of founders get this wrong. Come on, folks, it’s 2022; you know better. Make an operating plan. Stick it in your deck. Yes, it’s scary, because you’re really having to do a lot of thinking about what your business will look like for the next 18 months. But if you are struggling to put together an operating plan, you are, quite simply, not ready to run a startup. Brew a cup of coffee, gnash your teeth if you have to, and get it done.
All the Pitch Deck Teardowns to date
- Minut’s Series B stage deck that raised $15M, published April 28
- Momentum’s seed stage deck that raised $5M, published May 5
- Dutch’s Series A stage deck that raised $20M, published May 12
- BoxedUp, Inc.’s seed stage deck that raised $2.3M, published May 19
- Lumigo’s Series A stage deck that raised $29M, published May 26
- Encore’s seed-stage deck that raised $3M, published June 2
- Lunchbox’s Series B stage deck that raised $50M, published June 9
- Ergeon’s Series B stage deck that raised $40M, published June 16
- WayRay’s Series E stage deck that raised $80M, published June 23
- Wilco’s seed-stage deck that raised $7M, published June 30
- Enduring Planet’s seed-stage deck that raised $2M, published July 7
- Forethought’s Series C stage deck that raised $65M, published July 14
- Arkive’s seed-stage deck that raised $9.7M, published July 21
- Alto Pharmacy’s Series E stage deck that raised $200M, published July 28
- Glambook’s seed-stage deck that raised $2.5M, published August 4
- Five Flute’s pre-seed stage deck that raised $1.2M, published August 11
- Mi Terro’s seed-stage deck that raised $1.5M, published August 18
- SIMBA Chain’s Series A stage deck that raised $25M, published August 25
- Front’s Series D stage deck that raised $65M, published September 1
- Helu.io’s Series A stage deck that raised $9.8M, published September 15
- Party Round’s Angel stage deck that raised $7M, published September 22
- Rokoko’s Strategic Extension stage deck that raised $3M, published September 29
- Vori’s Series A stage deck that raised $10M, published October 5
- Supliful’s seed-stage deck that raised $1M, published October 13
- Palau Project’s pre-seed stage deck that raised $125K, published October 25
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