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
One-line company description worksheet
Draft, cut, and test the one sentence that has to do the work before anyone opens the deck.
The one-sentence description is the first thing the Pitch Deck Diagnostic asks about, because it is the sentence everything else in the deck has to survive. If a reader cannot repeat it back accurately after one read, nothing further down the deck gets a fair hearing.
This worksheet is a drafting process rather than a fill-in-the-blank: build the sentence from its two working parts, cut what a competitor could also say, then test it on someone outside the company and write down what came back.
Copyable template
What is in it
- Who you serve
- What changes for them
- First draft
- The cut
- The read-back test
- The version you are using
One step left
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
Run the read-back test with someone who does not work in your sector. A reader inside it will fill in your gaps from their own knowledge and hand the sentence back sounding better than it is. If the same word keeps getting misheard, that word is doing the damage.
Where this comes from
The thinking behind it
Take it with you
Related templates
Teaser email and one-pager
The short version that goes out before the deck, built around the ask rather than the story.
Copyable template
Objection-handling cheat sheet
The objections your deck invites, and the answer you want to have ready rather than improvise.
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.
Keep going