How to Create a Startup Pitch Deck

A startup pitch deck is a visual presentation—usually a slide deck— startup founders use to pitch their business and funding needs to investors to persuade them to commit capital. 

There’s never been a better time to work on your pitch deck, as 2025 saw an upswing in seed-stage venture capital deals for the first time since 2021, according to data from PitchBook.

This article covers the elements of a successful pitch deck, tips for putting one together, and lessons from founders who have raised funding for their own businesses. 

What is a startup pitch deck?

Startups typically pursue an innovative product, technology, or business model using investor funding to launch. A startup pitch deck is a visual presentation that outlines a startup founder’s vision primarily for an investor audience. It includes product details, market opportunity, business model, and the funding ask. 

Startup founders send their pitch deck to potential investors, often venture capitalists (VCs), in the hopes of getting a meeting. VCs and other business investors evaluate pitch decks to determine whether a proposal aligns with their portfolio and values, and whether they believe in the business and the founder(s). 

A pitch deck typically serves several purposes, including:

• Securing a first meeting with an investor 

• Guiding a live presentation at a pitch meeting

• Serving as leave-behind material for investors to review after a meeting

• Bringing new advisors, partners, or early hires up to speed on the business

Some founders also develop a short teaser deck to send to investors and a comprehensive deck to present in a live pitch meeting.

Elements of a startup pitch deck 

• Vision
• Solution
• Market opportunity
• Business model
• Competitor analysis and competitive advantages
• Go-to-market strategy
• Milestones and timeline
• Financials
• Founder and team
• Funding ask

Here are some key elements to include in your startup pitch deck: 

Vision 

A vision statement outlines the problem your business solves and your vision for solving it.

Solution 

This section shows how your product or service addresses the problem you outlined. You can use product screenshots or short demo videos to illustrate core features and demonstrate your value proposition.

Market opportunity

Use this section to outline market size and opportunity. Discuss the following metrics to give investors a complete picture:

• Total addressable market (TAM). This is the total demand for your product if you captured 100% of it.

• Serviceable addressable market (SAM). This is the slice of the market your business model can potentially reach. 

• Serviceable obtainable market (SOM). This is the portion you can realistically win in the near term, considering competition and resources. 

Business model

This section part of your pitch deck to explain how your business model will make money. Include:

• Pricing. This covers how the business will charge customers, such as one-time purchases or subscriptions, and any tiers. 

• Unit economics. This describes the revenue and cost associated with a single unit sold or a single customer, including your cost to acquire customers and the estimated lifetime value of a customer.

• Long-term unit economics. This looks at how unit economics are expected to shift as the business scales, rather than what they look like on day one. 

• Path to profitability. This is the point at which revenue is expected to exceed costs, along with the milestones that get the business there.

Because startups are designed for rapid growth and typically rely on outside funding until they turn a profit, investors expect to understand not only how the business makes money but also how quickly it can win market share and gain profitability. While they are weighing near-term pricing and margins, they also consider long-term economics, since a business can be expensive to run early on and still become efficient at scale. 

Tom Aulet, founder of Ergatta, which makes gamified rowing machines, says that the long-term unit economics of your business model can help investors understand your vision. Tom made it clear in his pitch deck that Ergatta required a heavy upfront investment but would be easily scalable in the future. 

“I looked back at our pre-seed pitch deck, where we raised our first dollars, and the underlying economic benefits of gaming were in our pitch deck,” Tom says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “It’s really played out like that: Games cost a lot of money to build, but once they’re built, they scale like software.”

Competitor analysis and competitive advantages

Summarize the competitive landscape and how you will differentiate in a brief competitor analysis. A short table or competitive matrix is a common format, since it lets investors compare positioning at a glance. 

Go-to-market strategy

Explain your go-to-market (GTM) strategy, which is how you plan to bring your product to market. This will explain at a high level how you plan to reach your target audience via marketing and sales channels. While your pitch deck will only need to include enough detail to inspire confidence in your idea, you can use a GTM template to detail your full strategy. 

Milestones and timeline

Create a timeline mapping out planned milestones and any you’ve already achieved, such as: 

• Product launches

• Key hires

• Revenue targets

This section should also outline how investors will track progress after they’ve invested. Mention relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) that you’ll use to track these milestones. 

Financials

This section breaks down the financial details of your business. Include: 

• Key financial reports like income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, and statement of shareholder equity

• Annual recurring revenue (ARR) or monthly recurring revenue (MRR)

• Financial projections for the next 12 to 24 months

If you run on Shopify, use Shopify Analytics to quickly pull numbers like monthly revenue, order volume, and repeat purchase rate. 

Founder and team

This section introduces the founders and the core team. It should highlight their:

• Professional experience. This includes relevant skills, credentials, and track record, like prior startups, industry expertise, or functional experience in areas like finance or operations.

• Founder-market fit. This includes personal history, prior roles, or life experience that connects them to the premise of their business. For example, a founder who worked inside the beauty industry might now be passionate about disrupting it, or a customer who longed for a specific product might now be filling a gap in the market.

Tower 28 Beauty founder Amy Liu says on Shopify Masters, “I raised $500,000 and pre-launched with nothing but my résumé and a deck—and honestly it was a very different deck than what I ended up launching.” For Amy, her decades of experience in the beauty industry is what motivated investors to fund her company.

Funding ask 

State how much funding the business is raising, the round type—such as pre-seed, seed, or Series A through C—and how the funds will be used. Break down the share of funds going toward hiring versus product development versus marketing, for example. 

Tips for creating a compelling startup pitch deck

• Believe in your product
• Add an appendix
• Create a compelling narrative
• Don’t fear rejection

Here are a few tips to help your pitch land, from founders of successful startups: 

Believe in your product

Regardless of the product or business you’re pitching, the first step is wholeheartedly backing your idea. 

For example, Kailey Bradt, CEO of minimalist skincare brand Sonsie, recalls creating her first pitch deck for another brand when she was just 23 years old and realizing she hadn’t considered some of the more nuanced details of her market. However, her bright-eyed optimism worked to her advantage. 

“I went in feeling like I could just do anything,” Kailey says. “So my mindset hasn’t changed: I think you really have to operate out of this place of ‘I can change the world with this brand or this product’—you really have to believe that you’re going to create the change you want to see.” 

Add an appendix

Keep your pitch deck narrative tight, but create a lengthy appendix for any question you might get asked.

Buzz Wiggins, cofounder of sparkling water system Aerflo, credits his cofounder John Thorp with having a slide for absolutely everything they might get asked. “I think that’s John’s thing in life: Always have a slide,” says Buzz on Shopify Masters. “If we get a question on an investor call and we can’t [answer] right on the spot, we take note of that. Then we go back, we research it, we make a slide. It’s in the appendix for the next time we get an investor call.”

If you have cofounders, you can also make a plan about who will be responsible for answering various types of questions. For example, when the three cofounders of frozen food brand Spatula Foods pitch investors (including on the Canadian version of TV show Dragons’ Den), each is responsible for discussing their area of expertise. 

“If any of those individuals asked about food, I can answer it with no problem,” chef and cofounder Wallace Wong says on Shopify Masters. “And Sheila, in terms of marketing and demographics, and Ian, in terms of the financials, operations, and logistics—the three of us were able to answer any question that someone would ask us. That’s a big thing because, ultimately, someone needs to trust you enough to give you money.”

Create a compelling narrative 

Your deck needs to tell a compelling story that holds the investors’ attention and draws them in. To do this, John and Buzz from Aerflo built their deck around a deliberate sequence.

“You’re taking people through a narrative of the company, but you want to do it in such a way that you build momentum, and in every slide and section of that narrative, people find themselves nodding their heads and getting drawn in,” says John.

Buzz outlines this structure for their deck:

• Market size. Use the first slide to show the size of the market to get investors excited about the opportunity.

• Problem. Then show the problem with the current options on the market, to highlight why the market needs to be disrupted.

• Hero slide. Reveal your physical product or service.

• Pricing. Resolve potential objections by presenting a pre-calculated, attractive price point.

Don’t fear rejection 

Founders who have pitched extensively describe rejection as routine, not a signal to stop. Women’s supplement brand Free Soul founder Arjun Sofat recalls a disastrous early meeting where investors laughed them out of the room. 

“The initial rounds of funding were brutal—I remember we walked into this fancy hotel to pitch to a husband-and-wife investor team, put our business cards down, and put our pitch decks down, and they literally laughed,” Arjun says on Shopify Masters. “Develop that rhino skin whereby you can take it on the nose and keep going and going.”

“It’s helpful to remember that if it wasn’t tough, everyone would have thriving businesses,” he says.