Pre-Seed Pitch Deck Checklist: 12 Slides Investors Expect

Your send deck has to work without you. A partner who reads it on a phone between meetings should understand what you do, why it matters now and why your team wins, in about three minutes.

The 12 slides

1. Title. Company name and a one-line description a stranger understands.
2. Problem. Who has it, how often, and what it costs them.
3. Solution. What you built, shown with a screenshot or image, not adjectives.
4. Why now. The change in technology, regulation or behaviour that makes this possible today.
5. Traction. Your best metric over time. If pre-revenue, show commitments: pilots, LOIs, waitlist quality.
6. Customer. One specific customer story with a real outcome.
7. Market. Bottom-up: reachable customers × realistic price, then the expansion path.
8. Business model. How you make money and early unit economics.
9. Competition. An honest view of alternatives and your edge.
10. Team. One proof point per founder: a result, an unfair insight or a distribution edge.
11. The round. Amount, instrument and the milestones it funds.
12. Contact. One line and an email.

The slides that cost founders meetings

• A top-down TAM ("1% of a US$50bn market") with no path to customers.
• A logo wall instead of a team slide. Previous employers are not proof of fit.
• A competition grid where you win every column. Investors know it's not true.
• "Use of funds" as percentages without milestones.

Test it before you send it

Send your deck to three people outside your industry. Ask them to describe the company back to you in two sentences. If they can't, the deck isn't finished.

Then make sure the deck, one-pager and data room tell the same story with the same numbers.