Apr 30, 2025
How to Build a Pitch Deck: A Strategic, Narrative Driven Approach
Building a pitch deck isn't just about putting together pretty slides it's about translating your business into a compelling, concise, and memorable story. It’s your chance to stand in front of potential investors, partners, or accelerators and show them not just what you’ve built, but why it matters and why you’re the right one to deliver it.
Whenever we create a pitch deck, we start by deeply understanding the business model. It's not just a surface-level overview; we dive into it like it's our own. We try to own the value proposition, dissecting it to better grasp the message. That’s when we begin to uncover real opportunities because when you think of the product or service as yours, you naturally start imagining how you would present it, shape it, and elevate it.
Why a Pitch Deck Matters More Than You Think
A great pitch deck isn't about overloading your audience with data. It's about narrative clarity, emotional resonance, and business validation. Investors don’t just fund ideas they back teams and stories they believe can win.
When we take on a pitch deck project, we apply a strategic brand thinking approach. It's what allows us to go beyond the basic checklist of slides and focus on how the story is told. That narrative lens is what reveals room for improvement in the way a message is delivered always with the target audience in mind. We keep asking: what will they feel, think, or question at each step of the deck?
Common Mistakes When Building a Pitch Deck
Even strong startups can weaken their case with the wrong kind of presentation. Some of the most common mistakes we see include:
Overloading slides with text or data
Investors aren’t reading essays they want clarity and confidence.
Focusing too much on the product, too little on the business
It’s easy to fall in love with your solution, but investors care about market fit and monetization.
Skipping the story
Facts tell, but stories sell. A deck that lacks emotional engagement is easy to forget.
Generic visuals or templates
Your pitch deck should feel like your brand. When we create decks, we make sure the visual identity reinforces the narrative. That’s not decoration it’s strategy.
The Core Structure of a Winning Pitch Deck
While every startup is different, certain slide elements are considered essential. These aren't just formalities they're strategic storytelling components. Based on what we’ve learned crafting decks and analyzing successful ones, here’s the flow we typically recommend:
Cover Slide – Company name, logo, and a bold tagline.
The Problem – What real-world issue are you solving?
The Solution – Your product/service and how it addresses the problem.
Market Opportunity – Who’s your audience? How big is the market?
Product Demo or Screenshots – A clear look at what you’re offering.
Business Model – How you make money.
Go-to-Market Strategy – How you plan to acquire and retain customers.
Traction – Key metrics, revenue, partnerships.
Competition – Who else is out there, and why you’re different.
Team – The people behind the vision.
Financials – Projections, unit economics, burn rate.
Use of Funds – Where the investment will go.
Closing/Call to Action – The ask.
We don’t just drop these into slides we customize the order and expression based on the narrative arc. For example, if a startup has massive traction early on, we might bring that slide forward to build immediate credibility.
How to Think Strategically Before Designing Anything
Before any visual elements come into play, our goal is to own the narrative. We ask ourselves:
What’s the true core of this business?
What assumptions are being made and can we validate them?
What would we say if this were our company?
By immersing ourselves this way, ideas begin to surface how to position a feature more clearly, how to visualize pain points in a more relatable way, or how to use storytelling to make the pitch unforgettable.
We always take a narrative-first approach. When we take a narrative perspective, it allows us to start identifying areas to enhance the message being delivered, always keeping in mind the user or users on the other side.
Visual Storytelling: Design with Purpose
Pitch decks aren't just visual aids they’re narrative and visual extensions of how each founder speaks. You can’t treat them as simple, pretty presentations or flat information packages. A deck should reflect how the founder or founding team communicates, connects, and convinces in real life.
The goal of a pitch deck is to help each founder or group of founders make a proposal to a specific audience, regardless of who they are. But it should capture the tone and personality with which the founders communicate that message.
So if a founder lacks charisma or prefers to stay grounded and direct, the pitch deck might lean into a more sober, refined tone. On the other hand, if the founders are charismatic, energetic, and naturally impactful speakers, then the deck should amplify that. It’s not just about style it’s about alignment between message, messenger, and medium.
That’s why we always take a narrative-first approach. When we take on a project, we think about what the founder would say on stage, how they'd move through the story, and how the visuals can mirror their energy.
