One-line company description worksheet
Draft, cut, and test the one sentence that has to do the work before anyone opens the deck.
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Pitch deck · Copyable template
Pitch deck outline
The slide order investors expect, with what each slide has to establish before the next one lands.
A deck is not meant to answer every possible question. For a first meeting the decision it has to support is narrow: whether this investor should spend more time learning about the company. That makes it a question of sequence and proof rather than of slide software.
This outline is the seven slides that carry that argument, in the order they have to arrive in, with what each one has to establish before the next one lands. Read the whole thing as a sequence of investor questions — what is the problem, who cares, why now, what changed, how do you make money, why can this team win, what does the round unlock.
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What is in it
- 1. The company, in one line
- 2. The problem, and why now
- 3. The product and the customer experience
- 4. Evidence of demand
- 5. Market and business model
- 6. Go-to-market, competition, and advantage
- 7. Team, round, and use of funds
- Appendix
- The reader test
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The template is ready. Add your email to open it, and you will also get The Raise Memo — a note for founders raising capital.
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Notes
Do not force a standard venture deck if you are pursuing grants, project finance, revenue-based financing, or a strategic partnership, because those run on a different decision process. Do not build the deck before the underlying definitions and numbers are reliable. And do not raise just because the deck is finished — raising less, continuing to operate, using revenue, or waiting for stronger evidence are all still available.
Where this comes from
The thinking behind it
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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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