Pitch Deck Architect

Turn a startup into a fundable narrative. A pitch deck isn't a product brochure - it's a story that answers, in order, the questions an investor is silently asking: Is this a real problem? Is this a big opportunity? Why this team? Why now? Will it work? Most decks fail because they lead with the product instead of the problem, bury the traction, and never make the market feel big.

This skill handles narrative and content. For the actual .pptx file, use the pptx skill. For visual design, use frontend-design or a design tool.

The investor's mental checklist

Every slide should move the investor closer to "yes" on these questions:

1. Is this a painful, real problem worth solving?
2. Is the market big enough to build a large company?
3. Is this solution meaningfully better than alternatives?
4. Is there evidence people want it (traction)?
5. Can this team actually execute?
6. Why will this win now (timing, unfair advantage)?
7. Does the ask and the math make sense?

If your deck doesn't answer all seven, it has a hole an investor will find.

The standard deck sequence (10-12 slides)

This order works because it mirrors how conviction builds. Don't rearrange without a reason.

1.  Cover        - Company name, one-line description, contact. The one-liner must be crisp.
2.  Problem      - The pain, made visceral and specific. Who hurts and how much.
3.  Solution     - How you solve it. Simple. What you do in one clear idea.
4.  Product      - How it actually works. Screenshots/demo. Keep it concrete.
5.  Market       - TAM/SAM/SOM. Make it big but credible. Bottom-up beats top-down.
6.  Traction     - The most important slide if you have any. Revenue, users, growth, retention.
7.  Business model - How you make money. Unit economics if you have them.
8.  Competition  - Honest landscape + why you win. Never say "we have no competition."
9.  Go-to-market - How you acquire customers and scale distribution.
10. Team         - Why THIS team wins. Relevant, unfair founder-market fit.
11. Ask          - How much you're raising, at what, and what it buys (milestones).
12. Vision       - Where this goes if it works. Leave them excited.

Adjust for stage: pre-seed leans on team + vision + market (little traction yet); Series A leans hard on traction + unit economics + GTM.

Slide-by-slide guidance

Problem

• Make it specific and real. "Small businesses struggle with X" is weak. Name who, quantify the pain.
• If the investor doesn't feel the problem, nothing else lands.

Solution

• One clear idea. If you need three sentences to explain what you do, sharpen it.
• Resist listing features here - that's the product slide.

Market

• Bottom-up TAM is more credible than "it's a $50B market." Show: number of potential customers × what they'd pay. Investors distrust top-down hand-waving.
• SOM (what you can realistically capture) matters more than a giant TAM number.

Traction (the slide that raises rounds)

• Lead with your best real number. Growth rate, revenue, active users, retention, whatever is strongest.
• A clean up-and-to-the-right chart beats paragraphs.
• No traction yet? Show evidence of demand: waitlist, LOIs, pilot results, engagement.
• Never fake or inflate. Investors do diligence and catch it, and it kills the deal.

Competition

• Never claim no competition - it signals you don't understand the market.
• Use a positioning frame (2x2 or feature comparison) that honestly shows where you win.
• Be fair about competitors' strengths, then show your edge.

Team

• This is founder-market fit. Why are you specifically the right people to win this?
• Relevant experience, unique insight, prior wins. Cut irrelevant resume padding.

The Ask

• State the amount, the stage, and specifically what the money achieves (milestones to next round).
• "Raising $1.5M to reach $2M ARR and 3x the team over 18 months" > "raising a seed round."

Writing rules

• One idea per slide. If a slide has two messages, split it.
• Headlines carry the message. The slide title should state the takeaway, not a category. "Retention improved 40% after onboarding revamp" > "Retention."
• Numbers over adjectives. "Fast growing" means nothing. "22% MoM for 8 months" means everything.
• Cut the jargon. If a smart outsider wouldn't understand it, rewrite it.
• The one-liner is do-or-die. You should be able to say what you do in one sentence a normal person understands. Work on this until it's sharp.

For YC / accelerator applications

These are different from a VC deck - they're mostly text answers plus a short video. Emphasis shifts to:

• Extreme clarity on what you do (one sentence)
• Traction and growth rate (they care intensely about this)
• Why this team, including any unusual founder story
• Evidence you move fast and ship
• Honest, specific answers - the reviewers read thousands and reward directness over polish

Review mode

When reviewing an existing deck:

## The story test
[Does the deck answer the 7 investor questions in a logical arc? Where does it break?]

## Slide-by-slide notes
[Specific issues per slide - buried traction, weak problem, vague ask, etc.]

## The one-liner
[Is it crisp? Offer 2-3 sharper versions.]

## What's missing
[Gaps an investor will immediately notice]

## Priority fixes
[The 3 changes that most improve fundability]

Hard rules

• Never fabricate or inflate traction, revenue, or metrics. It's fraud and it gets caught in diligence.
• Don't invent market size numbers - use credible sources or clearly-labelled bottom-up estimates.
• Be honest about stage and risks. Investors respect founders who know their weak spots.

Reference files

• references/traction-framing.md - How to present traction at each stage, including pre-revenue
• references/deck-by-stage.md - How the deck emphasis shifts: pre-seed vs seed vs Series A