Pitch deck outline
The slide order investors expect, with what each slide has to establish before the next one lands.
Copyable template
Pitch deck · Copyable template
Objection-handling cheat sheet
The objections your deck invites, and the answer you want to have ready rather than improvise.
Every gap in a deck turns into a question in the room. The Pitch Deck Diagnostic scores five dimensions — narrative, problem, market, traction, and the ask — and each one is really a prediction about which question you will be asked when that part is thin.
This sheet is the answers, written down before the meeting rather than improvised in it. Four lines for each. The last section is the one that matters most: what you say when you genuinely do not have the answer yet.
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What is in it
- Narrative — “What does the company actually do?”
- Problem — “Who exactly is this for, and what do they do today?”
- Market — “Why start there, and how do you reach them?”
- Traction — “How is that defined, and what changed?”
- The ask — “What does the money buy?”
- What you do not have an answer for
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Get the template
The template is ready. Add your email to open it, and you will also get The Raise Memo — a note for founders raising capital.
How to use it
Notes
Work through the sheet in the order above, because it is the order the questions arrive in. If you find yourself writing the same weak answer twice, the problem is in the deck rather than in the preparation, and the fix belongs there.
Where this comes from
The thinking behind it
Take it with you
Related templates
One-line company description worksheet
Draft, cut, and test the one sentence that has to do the work before anyone opens the deck.
Copyable template
Teaser email and one-pager
The short version that goes out before the deck, built around the ask rather than the story.
Copyable template
From the publication
Read The Raise Memo
A note for founders raising capital—what investors notice, how conviction gets built, and what to do next.
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