TK Pitch Deck Examples for Your Startup

Examples of GREAT pitch decks

There are some pitch decks that are so good, they stand as examples over time. We had Startups.com community members Caya, the founder and CEO of Slidebean, break down some great pitch decks so we all can all learn from what they did right.

Airbnb's pitch deck

The Airbnb pitch deck from 2009 has become an increasingly popular reference for entrepreneurs around the world. The company founders, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk used this pitch to raise $600K from Sequoia Capital and Y Ventures.  The company has since become a giant in the Travel industry, closing a round in early 2015 on a valuation of over USD $20 Billion.

Originally recovered from a 2011 talk by Blecharczyk on Startup Bootcamp in Boston, we got a glimpse at the exact slides that they used to pitch investors on their original fundraise. The deck was incredibly successful at summarizing the company vision and the huge market opportunity they had before them.

We’ve added all the original slides in this article along with a redesigned version using our Slidebean pitch deck templates, and we’ll be tearing down each one of the slides.

Airbnb pitch deck slide distribution

1. Cover
2. Problem
3. Solution
4. Market Validation
5. Market Size
6. Product
7. Business Model <<< KILLER SLIDE!
8. Adoption Strategy
9. Competition
10. Competitive Advantages
11. Team
12. Press
13. Users Testimonials
14. Financial

The slide distribution is actually not far from Dave McClure’s popular pitch deck template, and follows general presentation storytelling guidelines.

Cover Slide

Cover slides should stick to the very basics: company name and tagline.

Tagline are actually easier said than done, this should be a 5-7 word sentence that summarizes what your company does. ‘Book rooms with local, rather than hotels’ is a perfect explanation of Airbnb’s service, business model and target audience. It’s written in simple words without any startup jargon.

Defining your product this early on the deck is truly fundamental. If the viewer doesn’t have a good idea of what the product does by slide 2, they are less likely to engage with the presentation.

If you can’t describe what your product does in 7 words, go back to the drawing board.

Problem Slide

I’ve seen a lot of startups struggle with the problem slide, and I believe that Airbnb solved it marvelously. While a common approach to this is showing an image of the pain or the status quo, the guys at Airbnb went with 3 simple lines that perfectly explain their approach. Finally, notice how a keyword/key-phrase is highlighted in each sentence. If you are just screening through the slides, those are three words you will absolutely not miss. 

Airbnb’s product tries to solve a pricing problem with hotels (line 1), a cultural problem for leisure travel (line 2) and finally a technology problem(line 3), that other competitors like CouchSurfing had tried to solve in the past, unsuccessfully.

Finally, notice how a keyword/key-phrase is highlighted in each sentence. If you are just screening through the slides, those are three words you will absolutely not miss.

Problem slides need to create a connection with the audience or the investor that you are pitching. Make sure they are written in simple words and in a way that allows them to empathize with the problem easily.

Solution slide

In a similar manner to the Problem slide, the Solution slide should summarize the 3 most important reasons why a customer would buy your product; in other words, your core value propositions.

For your Solution, it’s important to talk about the benefits of your product rather than the features. In this Airbnb example, notice how instead of writing something along the lines of ‘search thousands of places to stay online’, they’ve summarized it to just ‘Save Money while traveling’.

Again, less is more when it comes to pitch decks, and the better you are able to summarize these benefits, the bigger impact you will cause on your investors.

Market Validation

Time to start crunching the numbers. It is only on very rare occasions that a company has absolutely no market comparison.

What you want to do here is provide the closest existing reference to a company in your space, to give investors a real idea of your market opportunity.

Airbnb used a combination of Craigslist and Couchsurfing for their validation. Craigslist had been ‘solving’ the issue of temporary hosting for a while, and the 17K weekly listings for SF and NY were the best possible proof of a demand for a similar product.

Market Size

With a similar importance to the Market Validation side, the Market Size slide should confirm to your investors the size of your opportunity, and should provide 3rd party proof of the size of your industry and its expected behavior for the upcoming years.

Airbnb’s Market slide makes a strong emphasis the HUGE 2 Billion+ trips that are booked worldwide on a yearly basis. More importantly, they verify this data with a credible source such as the Travel Industry Association.

Product

Product slides should summarize the core functionality of the product in as few words/images as possible. The Search by City > Review Listings > Book it! helps guide the user in what the interface does, and implies that the process consists of 3 simple steps.

Another great way to approach this slide is with a short 30 second video. A video is truly worth a thousand images, and as long as your technical setup allows it, that’s definitely the way you should go. Make sure to keep the images version around in case Internet fails.

For the product slide in our redesigned version, we decided to dedicate one slide to each one of the relevant product images. The original presentation didn’t really allow you to appreciate the product, and we believe this approach causes a much better impact on the viewer.

Business Model

“We take a 10% commission on each transaction” explains the company’s business model in a single line, it’s perfect! Your business model may be more complex than that, but always make sure that you can summarize it in a line.

Airbnb’s approach for this slide in their pitch deck was to run a simple projection:  assuming that they were able to conquer 15% of the market (and we know those market numbers are accurate because they were reviewed in the previous slide).

With an average transaction fee of $25 the company could easily project $200M in revenue between 2008 and 2011, which is bound to get anyone excited.

We believe this is the killer slide in Airbnb’s pitch deck: it confirms their simple business model, the HUGE potential the company has in an existent market, and it defines the vision of the founders on where they expect this product to be in 3 years time.

Adoption Strategy

This slide is often called the go-to-market strategy, and should summarize 2-3 core customer acquisition HACKS that you will use to grow the business. By hacks I mean that these methods need to be better, more scalable and more profitable than your competition.

In case of Airbnb, one of their key growth channels was a hack on Craigslist they called the ‘dual posting feature’. Basically, they developed a simple program that would automatically post any Airbnb listing on Craigslist, which at that point was one of the few options available to sublet apartments for tourists.

Competition

This 2-axis diagram is a perfect way to establish against your competition. By defining Offline vs Online on the horizontal axis, and Affordable vs Expensive on the vertical axis, it’s easy to visually convey your point.

Market leaders like CouchSurfing and Craigslist are definitely affordable, but require a lot of offline coordination, far from one-click booking. On the other hand, Orbitz and Hotels(dot)com are online, but significantly more expensive.

Make sure that you define the two core differentiators for your product, and setup the chart so it always shows up on the top right corner. Steve Jobs’ iPhone introduction is probably the best example you can find of a similar chart.

Competitive Advantages

What you want to do on this slide is answer questions before they come up. Make sure that you point out the core benefits (remember benefits, not feature) that will allow you to outrun your competitors.

Airbnb had significant advantages to make them a (more than) interesting opportunity: first to market, extremely easy to use in comparison to the alternatives in 2009, and more importantly, the host incentive variable that had a direct benefit for the hosts, which literally no other tool could provide.

Team

We’ve seen a lot of companies struggle with the team slides, from the amount of information to add about each team member, to the number of team members to actually list on the slide.

As a general rule, my recommendation would be to stick to the founding team for this slide. The hustler/hacker/hipster trio is the ideal combination here. Also, avoid adding advisors to the team slide, they are usually not relevant enough to make the cut for your pitch deck.

Finally, notice how the team at Airbnb focused particularly on listing each founder’s entrepreneurial achievements, rather than their academic titles. In the end, experience matters A LOT more.

PRESS & USERS TESTIMONIALS

These slides are here to provide validation a credibility, as long as you have a credible source to quote. Your Press slide proves that your concept is interesting enough to be featured in __________, and that your team was clever enough to get you featured.

As for the user testimonials, make sure to pick reviews that talk about the core benefits of your product, as a confirmation that your customers are understanding the underlying value.

For the press and the testimonials slides, we decided to cut down the number of quotes to 3, to allow larger, and more readable text.

Financial

Finally, your financial slide or ‘the ask’ should have the details of your round or fundraising efforts. Be very careful about the information that you disclose here, general solicitation legislation prohibits the disclosure of some information, that might jeopardize your company and even your investors in the future.

As a general rule, stay on the safe side. Keep a public version of your deck with no financials, that you can share around to get intros and meetings. Once you have an established link with your investor, disclose the details of your company financials and projections.

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We hope you find this article useful and that you can learn something from the success of Airbnb’s pitch deck. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

I think it’s safe to say that having an amazing business was the single most important reason for their success to date, but ensuring that the business vision is portrayed correctly, especially in the early stages, is fundamental to get your investors excited.

If you’re interested in using this deck as a template, we recommend giving Slidebean a try. You can sign up free, here.

Also worth a read:

1. The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for your Startup Investor Pitch Deck
2. How to Create an Eye-Catching Pitch Deck
3. Pitch Decks 101: The Ultimate Guide to Sealing a Deal in the Boardroom
4. Snapchat Pitch Deck: A Teardown of Their Business Deck
5. Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know

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This article was originally shared on Slidebean

There are many examples of beautifully designed decks from startup companies that successfully raised funds from investors and became multimillion-dollar businesses—all thanks to a few presentation slides. So, in order to come up with a perfect pitch deck, it would be good to take a look at what worked well for other founders.

The ideal investor presentation for a company would depend on its product, needs, vision, team, and audience. These are the best ones picked based on different criteria.

Best Business School-Approved Deck: YouTube

YouTube’s 2005 pitch deck is a classic. It closely followed Sequoia Capital’s suggested deck template for startups with excellent results, since YouTube was launched primarily by an $11.5M investment from Sequoia. The company was eventually acquired by Google for $1.6 billion in 2006. It is now known as a pioneer in the way people publish video content on the web.

The deck is a study in restraint. The simple Powerpoint presentation clearly defines in one slide the problems that users experience when sharing video files; then it gives corresponding solutions in the succeeding slide. The rest of the slides are as uncomplicated. They all contain two to four bullet points with each bullet at most four lines long. The statements are simple and straight-to-the-point while avoiding the use of jargon that plagues a lot of tech pitches. Even the graphs in the appendices can be considered basic, yet they present data that is useful to potential investors.

These days, YouTube’s minimalist deck design might come across as outdated, but it does demonstrate that any good presentation should have a solid backbone. Following a prescribed deck outline will not only help in organization and flow, but it can also be a strategic decision for a pitch. When in doubt, go back to business school basics and build on an idea in a logical manner that everyone will understand.

Best Trendy Take on a Classic: Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll)

ZenPayroll was founded by its CEO Joshua Reeves, himself an angel investor. He recommends all startups to have a deck especially during the seed round, because “[it’s] how you present your story.” The company raised $6.1 million from Silicon Valley bigwigs that included the founders of Dropbox, Gmail, and YouTube using a deck that starts off with a bold declaration of its vision. It released the presentation template it used in the hopes of helping other startup companies share their vision with investors.

The deck contains all the elements of the usual pitch, but with a few tweaks. It gives a general overview of its environment first starting with the market and the industry landscape before detailing the problem and its solution. Many deck outlines, like the guides set by Guy Kawasaki and Dave McClure, begin with the problem and discuss the business milieu after. Though, it is possible that ZenPayroll opted for this format because its product caters to businesses and not mass market consumers. The problem is very specific to the HR industry and might not be familiar to investors outside of that industry, so an initial understanding of the environment is vital.

A unique slide included in the deck is titled This is Only Possible Now, which is similar to the Why Now? slide in Sequoia’s prescribed outline. It is supposed to contain the reason why now “is the time for your product and your business to succeed.” Many pitch decks, including that of YouTube, skip this slide. However, it creates a sense of urgency and gives the presenters a chance to explain the relevance of their product amidst current market and technological trends. A lot of startups fail to launch not because they don’t have great ideas, but because investors simply find them premature.

Best Show, Don’t Tell: Foursquare

Foursquare’s pitch deck can be considered as non-traditional as it functions more as a user guide than an investor presentation. Nonetheless, the tactic worked for the company and raised $166.35 million in equity funding from 18 investors including Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, and Silver Lake Partners. Its gamification of “check-ins” is currently building the foundation for a global location intelligence industry.

Veering away from the traditional pitch deck format might be beneficial if the presenters want to demonstrate exactly how the product works and how existing users are currently making use of the product. Talking about “mayorship” and “badges” in Foursquare terms is easier when the audience can see it in action. It provides solid proof of the product, which might already be enough to convince investors, especially if the concept is that good.

Furthermore, Foursquare offers distinct solutions to two different markets: consumers and advertisers. Its deck is able to weave together the discussions for these different solutions by going with a format that works best for its purposes instead of abruptly switching topics within the presentation or making two separate presentations for the sake of coherence. The focus of the presentation is mostly on the functionalities of the app, which are relevant to both markets.

Best Simplification of a Complex Product: Dwolla

Dwolla is the result of its founder’s own problem of paying thousands of dollars in credit card fees. The company’s pitch deck certainly keeps this pain point in mind for every slide as it keeps reminding the audience about the central issue and how Dwolla can solve it. Technicalities, legalities, and financials are a crucial part of a fin-tech startup pitch. However, the deck’s design and format allow for the presentation of necessary information without overwhelming the audience. The pitch was a success, and the startup received $16.5 million from venture capitalists.

The slides on How Cards Work and How Dwolla Works are good visual representations of the difficulty of fund transfers through the usual payment channels versus the ease when using Dwolla. The two contrasting flowcharts show that the former method takes too long and costs more money, while the latter takes less than a second and costs only a negligible amount in transaction fees.

Like Foursquare’s deck, it opts to show, not tell, the complexities of the product by making data easier to digest through visuals. Even if the audience is comprised of investors who are stereotypically well-versed in finance and technology, remember that they only have a few minutes to understand each slide and it is also possible for them to get bored. Investors understand the challenges of any business process and will ask for clarifications later, if the need arises.

Best Deck About Nothing: Itay Adam

This five-slide deck is worthy of mention simply because it is about nothing, but raised $2 million dollars in funding. Subversive and clever, the presentation took inspiration from the show Seinfeld, which was also pitched as “a show about nothing.” While simple, Adam’s pitch is far from being lazy. What he lacked in concrete information about his product and company, he made up for in entertainment value. He faced investors with what is essentially a 40-minute stand-up comedy routine and a few bare slides about a dream team of seasoned industry experts that included himself.

Though the rest of his concept is highly speculative, his main idea is clear. That’s what fundraising pitches basically are—an invitation to take a leap of faith. So no matter how complete and info-packed a pitch deck might be, if the presenters can’t persuade their audience to believe in their dream, then it will not become a reality.

Making a “Best” Pitch Deck Be Purposeful with the Format

Don’t get creative with the deck’s format just to be creative. Classic templates similar to the ones used by YouTube and ZenPayroll have been tried-and-tested in many successful investor pitches, so they definitely work. The format is also one that most investors have come to expect and taking a different route might end up confusing them.

However, there are instances when being different makes sense and will even help a presentation stand out from a sea of other pitch decks. For example, starting with a slide on the team members is good if they have impressive backgrounds that are relevant to the product or their names have notoriety within the industry.

Although, it’s not necessary to do a complete overhaul of the traditional deck template. Slightly rearranging slides or adding new ones can already improve the impact of a pitch.

CREATE A SENSE OF URGENCY

This sense of urgency can be created in different ways. It can come from the fact that a concept’s time is now as in the case of ZenPayroll. The solution being offered is perhaps timely and addresses real, current issues. The company can also present its product as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity or an exclusive deal that investors don’t want to miss out on.

What’s important is that this urgency is clear in the pitch deck. A slide can be dedicated to this aspect of the pitch, or it can be a recurring theme throughout the presentation.

THINK OF THE ENTIRE DECK AS A VISUAL AID

There’s no need to put huge blocks of texts when a simple diagram or graph can easily explain the message of a slide. Learn from Foursquare’s presentation, which has photos of the app as users see it. Understand that a deck is not a paper report or a book that will be silently read; it is meant to be used as a visual supplement to a speaker’s story.

Spend time on creating the graphics and visual elements that will be included in the deck. If necessary, hire an artist to make them, but presentation software apps like Slidebean already have a lot of graphics built into the templates that will make pitch decks look professional and engaging.

AIM TO ENTERTAIN

As Itay Adam demonstrated, the art of persuasion lies in entertaining the audience. He hired a professional screenwriter to help with his amusing presentation and it paid off in the end with a pitch that seemed effortless. However, when the presenter is not a naturally gifted entertainer, he or she can instead make up for it in other ways.

A visually stimulating deck, as described in the previous section, can already be quite entertaining. Product demonstrations and audience interactions, when the pitch format and venue allows, will also make a presentation more interesting. In addition, presenters should practice their delivery and learn how to build rapport with an audience. A gorgeous deck becomes worthless if the speaker is unable to properly articulate his or her message and heavily relies on the slides to carry the entire presentation.

CHOOSE WHAT’S AUTHENTIC

Foursquare can’t use Dwolla’s deck and expect the same results it got from its original pitch deck. Conversely, its unusual social media-based deck might not work for Dwolla’s fin-tech solutions. The most successful pitch decks are best appreciated within the context they were created. A young, inexperienced startup founder is unlikely to get away with blatantly copying the odd pitch done by Itay Adam, who is a veteran at pitching. It will not only come across as contrived, but the attempt at giving a creative pitch by imitating another ultimately makes it unoriginal.

Take a cue from the advice given at the end of ZenPayroll’s deck template: There are many different styles or formats you can use to present your vision and potential. Above all, choose what’s most authentic to you.

Also worth a read:

1. The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for your Startup Investor Pitch Deck
2. How to Create an Eye-Catching Pitch Deck
3. Pitch Decks 101: The Ultimate Guide to Sealing a Deal in the Boardroom
4. Snapchat Pitch Deck: A Teardown of Their Business Deck
5. Airbnb Pitch Deck: Teardown and Redesign

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Also shared on Slidebean blog.