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
Teaser email and one-pager
The short version that goes out before the deck, built around the ask rather than the story.
Founders usually treat the ask as a formality — round number, logo, done. Investors read it as a test of whether you know what you are buying with the money. A vague ask signals a founder who has not turned a number into a plan; a specific one signals the opposite.
This is the short version that goes out before the deck, built around that ask. Five things have to survive the trip: the amount, what it buys, the milestone it funds, the runway it creates, and the decision the reader is being asked to make. If someone could not rebuild your plan from this note alone, it is not finished.
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What is in it
- What we do
- Why now
- What we can show
- The amount
- What it buys, and the milestone it reaches
- The runway it creates
- What I am asking you to decide
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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.
How to use it
Notes
Before writing any of it, answer two sentences for yourself: what milestone is this money buying, and what happens to the company on both sides of hitting it. If you cannot, the ask is not ready no matter how clean the note reads. One exception worth knowing: if you are pre-revenue and raising a small pre-seed on relationships and conviction, a fully itemized use-of-funds breakdown can read as overengineered — amount, broad allocation, and what you are trying to prove is enough at that stage. The discipline is the same either way.
Where this comes from
The thinking behind it
Take it with you
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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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