What to Cut From Your Pitch Deck

Most deck advice is about what to add. The faster wins are usually about what to remove. A first-time founder's deck is almost always too long, too dense, and too eager to cover everything. Here's what I tell people to cut.

Cut the words

The cheatcode: no more than a quarter of your slides should be mostly text. Under a hundred words a slide. The slide is the backdrop; you're the show. If a sentence only works when someone reads it silently, it belongs in what you say out loud, not on the screen.

When I review decks, "this is a lot of words for a slide" is the note I leave most. Walls of text don't get read in a pitch. They get skimmed while the investor waits for you to get to the point.

Cut the undefined jargon

Every term an investor has to decode is a small tax on their attention. Sometimes a technical word is genuinely the right one. Fine, but define it the first time it appears. Defining it teaches the room and quietly signals that you're the expert, without making anyone feel behind.

Cut "we have no competition"

Founders say it to sound like they're in a category of one. It lands as "I haven't done the research." Every product competes with something, even if that something is a spreadsheet or doing nothing. Name your real competition and show how you're different. Just don't swing the other way and spend the pitch trashing them; that reads as cocky and insecure at once.

Cut the valuation you can't defend

An overshot valuation with no data behind it is a red flag, not an anchor. Investors expect realistic forecasts grounded in something. A number you can't back up makes them question every other number in the deck.

Cut the SWOT slide

And the "How's everyone doing today?" opener. And the generic "Q&A" or "Thank You" slide at the end. End on your strongest slide instead, something you want on screen, lingering in the room while you take questions.

Cut "AI-powered" if it's a costume

There's a trap in every deck right now: slapping "AI-powered" on a thin wrapper around a general model. Investors have seen a thousand of these, and it costs you credibility instead of earning it. They don't care about your tech stack. They care whether you solve a big, painful problem people will pay for. If AI is genuinely core, show the moat: what protects you from competitors and from the models themselves getting better. If it's not core, lead with your customers and traction instead.

Go easy on the exit talk

A little analysis of recent acquisitions in your space is useful, it shows you know how investors get paid. But leading with your own exit, before you've shown the business works, reads as getting ahead of yourself. Build the case that this is a real company first.

Cutting is harder than adding. Every slide you remove is a decision you're making for the investor instead of making them make it. That's the point. A short, sharp deck is a founder saying: I know what matters here, and I'm not going to waste your time. That's the founder people want to back.

Want a read on what to cut before investors do it for you? Let's talk.