Notes on a Pitch Deck

Someone found me on Polywork and asked if I'd look at his investor deck. I didn't know him. He was a first-time founder building an app that gives farmers personalized agronomic advice, plus a community where they trade what's working in the field. Good mission, big ambition, his first raise.

I said yes, no strings.

I like doing this. A pitch deck is really a product in disguise, and it asks the same three things any product does: who is this for, what does it do, and why should anyone believe you. So I dropped his slides onto a board and left notes, the way I'd want someone to do for me. Most of them had nothing to do with design.

Here's what I kept coming back to.

Tell me what it does first

A few slides in, I realized I still couldn't say what the app actually did. I'd met the founder, the mission, and the market, but not the product. It's an easy trap, and a common one. We're proud of the why, so we lead with it and let the what wait.

I'd flip it. Open with the thing itself, what it is and who it's for, then earn the right to talk about the team. If you've watched a few Shark Tank pitches, you know the ones that land tend to start there.

Put fewer words on the slide

A lot of the slides were dense, paragraphs where a phrase would do.

A deck isn't a document. The slide is the backdrop; you're the show. If a sentence only works when someone reads it silently, it probably belongs in what you say out loud, not on the screen. The best decks let the room listen instead of read.

Connect the problem to the solution

He had a sharp problem section and a sharp solution section, with nothing linking them. So I sketched a bridge sentence as an example: farmers can use proven methods like crop rotation and water-efficient irrigation to improve yields, stay ahead of the weather, and keep pests in check.

That's the move. Name the problem, then point straight at the specific thing your product does about it. It's a small connection, but the investor shouldn't have to make it for you.

And where the deck was already strong, I told him so. One slide described the product better than almost anything I'd seen. Feedback that's all red ink is easy to wave off. Naming what's working makes the rest land.

Show proof, not placeholders

There was a big market number on one slide, the kind that wants a source. Without one, a figure on a fundraising slide reads as a hopeful guess.

The product shots were stand-ins too, not the real app. I'd take a plain wireframe of the actual screen over a polished placeholder any day, because it's real. Same with the money: he knew his pricing and his fees cold, but the slide stayed vague. Putting the real numbers down is the difference between "we have some ideas" and "we know how this works." And one small, human note: a crisp headshot in a winter coat sat oddly on a deck about farming. Pictures should pull toward the story.

Make the next step obvious

The closing slide asked investors to reach out and gave them no way to do it. So my last notes were the most practical. Add a scheduling link. Make the URLs clickable. Put up a simple page so someone can look before they leap. If you're hoping for partners or sponsors, name the ones you want.

The thread through all of it: don't make people work to say yes. And measure what actually matters, the impact you're chasing, not the download count.

A deck is a product

I spent an afternoon on a stranger's slides, and I'd happily do it again. Not because I had all the answers, it's his company and his call, but because it's the work I love most: take something a little tangled, say plainly what's going on, and hand it back clearer than I found it.

That's really all a pitch deck has to do. Say what it is, drop what doesn't earn its place, and make the next step easy.

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