# How to build your seed round pitch deck

**Author:** Aaron Harris
**Type:** Essay
**URL:** https://www.ycombinator.com/library/2u-how-to-build-your-seed-round-pitch-deck


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Demo Day for our Winter 2018 batch is a week from today. We’re largely focused on preparing companies for their on-stage
presentations, but are also working with them on slightly longer decks to use in follow-up conversations with investors.

[I’ve written about pitching before](http://www.aaronkharris.com/advice-on-pitching), and realized that what we were
missing was a clear template for how founders should lay out their stories through slides. The deck below is a template
for how I think companies should build seed decks. While the main target for this template is a company raising its seed
round, the deck is not all that different from best practices for a Series A deck - which we’ll release next.

The key point to remember here is that founders should strive for clarity and concision. This is not the right place to
write a treatise on your market or world philosophy. The simple truth is that there isn’t very much meaningful detail to
explore for most seed stage companies. When founders pretend that there is, their stories get muddled, and the investors
get lost.

Focus on narrative. The rest is commentary. (see footnote)

![template-3](https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/YC-seed-deck-template-2.jpeg)

This is the title page. It has the name of your company, and a one line description of what you do.

This is the only place in the deck where you can only have 1 slide for what you need to show. Any of the other slides in
this deck should be treated as a first slide of a set. If you can keep the set to n=1, that’s ideal, but if you need
more, that’s ok. You probably don’t want any set here where n \> 3. This is a seed deck, remember.

![template-4](https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/YC-seed-deck-template-3.jpeg)

This is where you clearly state the problem. Particulars of how this problem impacts real world people/businesses are
valuable.

![template-5](https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/YC-seed-deck-template-4.jpeg)

This is the solution. You want to explain what you do very clearly, in as few words as possible. Describe the concrete
benefits you provide

![template-6](https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/YC-seed-deck-template-5.jpeg)

Show off your traction (if you have it). Make the numbers clear and meaningful. It’s unlikely your curve will be this
smooth. That’s ok.

Add some context next to the chart if you’ve got some great stats you want to add.

![template-7](https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/YC-seed-deck-template-6.jpeg)

Got more metrics? Awesome\! Add them\!

Trick slide\! Revenue would be better here, but this is ok.

![template-8](https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/YC-seed-deck-template-7.jpeg)

Tell the investor what makes you so special, what makes this work, what your insights are. This might take more than one
slide.

![template-9](https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/YC-seed-deck-template-8.jpeg)

Business model is important. You probably don’t know all the details yet, but you should know a lot of them. Lay it out.
If you need more space to dig into something complicated, add slides.

![template-10](https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/YC-seed-deck-template-9.jpeg)

What’s the market here? Is it going to be big? Will you make it big? How much money are you going to make off this
thing? Convince the investor that they’re going to make lots of money with you

![template-11](https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/YC-seed-deck-template-10.jpeg)

Team\! So important at seed. Talk about what makes your team particularly well suited to the problem. This should be
about founders. Nobody cares about your advisors.

![template-12](https://blog.ycombinator.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/YC-seed-deck-template-11.jpeg)

Tell the investor how much money you need, and what it gets you. If you can lay out where you’ll be inside of a year,
which should make you Series A ready, that’s powerful

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footnote: This deck is intentionally simple in design. Kevin Hale wrote a great piece about [how to design decks
well](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/4T-how-to-design-a-better-pitch-deck).

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*Thanks to Jared Friedman for suggesting that we put this together, and for reviewing it.*

