Every startup pitch deck is the same deck. Different logo, same slides, same hockey stick. Here is a tour, for investors who have seen it 4,000 times and founders about to make it 4,001.
Slide 1: The Logo
A lowercase word with a vowel removed. “Flwr.” “Grwth.” “Spnd.” The startup will spend more time on this slide than on the product.
Slide 2: The Problem
“Millions of people struggle every day to find the right sock.” A stock photo of a woman frustrated at a laptop. She has been frustrated at that laptop since 2011. Nobody will help her.
Slide 3: The Solution
An app. It is always an app. “We use AI to connect people with socks.” The word AI appears three times. The founder couldn’t point to it with a map.
Slide 4: Market Size
Three concentric circles. The biggest says “$2.1 trillion”. This is the entire global clothing market. The founders plan to capture 1% of it, the way a man in a pub plans to get fit.
If you capture just 1% of the market, you’ll be rich. If you capture 0%, which is what happens, you’ll have a podcast and a garage full of branded socks.
Slide 5: Traction
A graph going up and to the right. The Y-axis has no label. The X-axis is “weeks”. The graph is the founder’s mother opening the app, out of loyalty, then worry.
Slide 6: Business Model
“Freemium.” Free, and then, at some point, mysteriously, money. The point is never reached. The runway is.
Slide 7: Competition
A two-by-two grid. The startup is top right. All competitors are bottom left, looking embarrassed. The axes are “Innovative” and “Ours”. They have revenue.
Slide 8: The Team
Three people in black T-shirts with their arms folded. One is “ex-Google” (internship, 2016, mostly the canteen). An advisor whose total involvement was one coffee, which he didn’t pay for.
Slide 9: The Ask
“We’re raising $3 million.” For what is unclear. Partly the app. Mostly a bean bag. Eighteen months of founder salary.
Slide 10: Thank You
The logo again. Bigger. Someone, somewhere, asked for that. In two years it will be a line in a liquidator’s spreadsheet, in a very small font.