Your pitch deck is a crime scene.
Here are 5 pitch deck slides that should be charged with killing investor interest.
Hey friends đ
It was a quiet Tuesday morning when the deck hit my inbox.
Fourteen slides. One founder. Zero chance in hell.
The fonts were clean. The gradient was tasteful. But beneath the glossy veneer, something felt⊠off.
The kind of off that makes investors go dark right after promising to âcircle back.â
The kind of off that gets you polite smiles on Zoom â and no follow-up.
The kind of off this hard-boiled PI of pitching has seen before.
Too many times.
Itâs a pitch deck dressed to kill â except the only thing it murders is your shot at funding.
So today, weâre cracking the case wide open. Five slides show up in the wreckage. Five slides that scream âI watched a bad YouTube tutorial and made it worse.â Five slides youâd do well to avoid.
Letâs dive deep đ
These are serious accusations. Letâs not waste time.
Your Honor, Iâd like to admit as Exhibit AâŠ
Exhibit A: The TAM slide that ate Manhattan
Charge: Aggravated market delusion.
It always starts the same way:
A really big number.
An even bigger dream.
And a total disconnect from reality.
âThe global wellness market is $4.2 trillion. If we capture just 0.1%âŠâ
Stop right there. Youâve already lost the jury.
When you lead with a top-down TAM slide, youâre not showing ambition â youâre showing that you donât understand how markets work. Or even how math works!
Youâre basically saying: âI Googled something massive and now I think I deserve funding.â
This is what I call Pitch Deck cosmology: the belief that if the universe is big enough, surely your startup has a place in it. As if you can escape the startup equivalent of the Drake Equation by just starting with a big enough number.
But investors donât back astrology â they back strategies.
So when you trot out a trillion-dollar industry with no credible path to your first ten million, hereâs what they hear:
You donât know who your actual customer is
You donât know how to reach them
Youâre using size to mask your lack of strategy
Itâs giving⊠crypto bro who snorted too much hopium.
Itâs giving⊠âmy total addressable market is âpeople with money.ââ
Itâs giving⊠âI watched a Y Combinator video once and took the worst possible notes.â
What to do instead:
Build your market story from the bottom up.
Show that you understand:
Your wedge: the specific customer segment youâre starting with (how youâre getting into the market);
Their willingness to pay: what theyâre already spending or cobbling together to solve a severe and urgent problem;
How you reach them: actual acquisition logic â backed by data, not vibes.
Try this instead:
âWeâre targeting 12,000 independent wellness coaches already paying for business tools. Weâve interviewed 30, and 22 volunteered (unprompted!) that theyâd pay more for a more integrated scheduling + billing solution. Thatâs a $48M wedge â and itâs growing.â
Now thatâs a market story with teeth.
No hand-waving. No inflation. No pretending youâre about to dominate the entire wellness-industrial complex.
Just a tight wedge, a real buyer, and a credible plan to scale from there.
Go from delusional to directional.
Your cap table will thank you.
Your Honor, Iâd now like to submit into evidenceâŠ
Exhibit B: The problem slide thatâs just a Tweet in disguise
Charge: First-degree vagueness with intent to confuse.
It looks harmless at first. Maybe even insightful.
A single sentence.
White text on a moody background.
Something like:
âPeople are overwhelmed by information and crave authentic connection.â
Straight out of Hallmarkâs new Silicon Valley line.
Unfortunately, we canât prosecute vibes.
This is the kind of slide that makes investors quietly reach for their coffee⊠and their phone.
Because you didnât understand the assignment:
Thatâs not a problem slide. Itâs a manifesto.
And while that might win you claps at a founder retreat, it wonât get you a term sheet.
Why it doesnât work:
No clear user â who, exactly, has this problem? Teenagers? Therapists? Tired Karens?
No mechanism â how is this problem currently showing up in their lives? Whatâs the friction, the workaround, the painkiller theyâre overpaying for?
No evidence â just poetic generalities and a quiet hope that your investor fills in the blanks for you.
Itâs giving⊠âI am the customer.â
Itâs giving⊠âI once had this problem and assumed everyone else does too.â
Itâs giving⊠âI let ChatGPT write this and didnât even proofread.â
Youâre trying to show that a specific group of people is experiencing a specific, painful, monetizable problem â and that you understand it better than anyone.
Fortunes belong in cookies, not pitch decks.
What to do instead:
Swap inspiration for evidence. Replace the tweet with a quote, a pattern, or a pain metric.
Something real. Like this:
âWe help solo therapists reduce client no-shows and increase rebooking with automated SMS nudges and follow-up scheduling. No app downloads, no new logins.â
Suddenly we have:
A real person (solo therapist)
A real problem (no-shows, rebooking)
A real solution mechanism (SMS nudges)
A reason to believe (low-friction implementation)
Thatâs how you earn trust â not through cleverness, but through clarity.
A problem slide should make your investor sit up and mutter, âoh damn⊠thatâs real.â
If it sounds like a tweet, delete it.
If it reads like a case file, keep it.
Your Honor, I now presentâŠ
Exhibit C: The Traction Slide That Proves You Donât Have Any
Charge: Misleading investors with vanity metrics in the first degree.
The slide looks impressive at a glance:
4,000 installs
10,000 emails generated
7 enterprise leaders filled out a demo form
One of them said, âThis is super interestingâ
Airtable logos.
Bar charts.
Maybe even a hockey stick that curves suspiciously fast.
But beneath the numbers?
Nothing.
No money.
No momentum.
No movement toward a repeatable path to revenue.
This is what I call traction theatre â it looks great in Figma, but folds under questioning faster than a paper straw.
Because hereâs the harsh truth:
Activity â traction.
Curiosity â intent.
Sparks â fire.
If youâre raising a pre-seed or seed round, investors arenât expecting $1M ARR. But they are expecting evidence of progress â real behavior from real users solving a real problem and pointing toward a real business.
The usual red flags:
â100+ signups!â â with no follow-up, engagement, or revenue.
âWe have 5 LOIsâ â aka, your friends filled out a Google Doc.
â10K website visitors!â â cool story, bro. Who stayed? Who paid?
Itâs giving⊠pitch competition energy.
Itâs giving⊠WeWork-era KPIs.
Itâs giving⊠âWe were too scared to test pricing, so we counted clicks instead.â
What to do instead:
Treat your traction slide like a lab notebook â not a sales brochure.
Show:
What youâve tried
What youâve learned
How itâs shaping go-to-market motion
For example:
âWe ran three pricing tests with early-stage HR teams. At $99/mo, 2 of 5 converted within 14 days. At $149/mo, 0 of 5 converted. Weâre currently optimizing onboarding to reduce dropoff from 47%.â
That shows real traction:
Buyers exist
Some are paying
Youâre learning and iterating
Traction isnât what makes you look big.
Itâs what makes you look right.
So stop trying to impress with volume.
Start proving you understand the path to value.
Your Honor, the prosecution would now like to introduceâŠ
Exhibit D: The team slide thatâs just a yearbook page
Charge: Excessive optimism with intent to embellish.
You know the one.
Three polished headshots. Titles like âVisionaryâ and âGrowth Hacker.â
Maybe a fourth square that just says: âHiring: Rockstar CTO đ€â
And the subtitle?
âTogether, we have 30+ years of combined experience.â
Groan.
Because what you donât say is that most of those years were spent doing things completely unrelated to this company â and which donât increase the likelihood of success.
Iâm not saying that your team slide shouldnât have headshots. It probably should.
But it should tell a story â not just show off your ability to crop a circle in Figma.
Because when investors ask âWhy you?â, they donât mean why are you passionate?
They mean: what unfair advantage do you have?
Whatâs your earned insight? Your relevant experience? Your reason to win that others donât have?
The usual crimes:
âEx-Googleâ â in a role completely unrelated to your market or product.
âPassionate about mental healthâ â but with no domain experience, clinical background, or customer evidence.
âBuilt apps since collegeâ â but never launched, sold, or scaled one.
Itâs giving⊠delusions of founder-market fit.
Itâs giving⊠âmy cofounder is just my roommate.â
Itâs giving⊠âweâre smart, weâll figure it out.â
And thatâs not enough.
Not anymore.
What to do instead:
Your team slide should answer:
Why youâre uniquely qualified to solve this problem
What proof points support that claim (experience, results, insight, reputation)
What gaps remain â and how youâre closing them
Try this:
âOur CEO spent 4 years as Head of Ops at a top teletherapy platform, where she oversaw scheduling and billing across 1,500 clinicians. Our technical cofounder built the internal tooling for that same ops team. Weâre currently backed by an advisor with 20+ years in practice management.â
Boom. Thatâs a team.
You donât need to be famous or pedigreed.
You just need to be the right team for this problem at this moment in time.
Donât list rĂ©sumĂ©s. Build a case.
If you donât have the background from your job history, then that case has to come from what youâve accomplished so far in this startup.
Your Honor, for our final piece of evidenceâŠ
Exhibit E: The financials slide thatâs just scaled delusion.
Charge: Obstruction of truth with intent to dazzle.
There it is.
We all knew it was coming.
Slide 13: the spreadsheet slide.
The one with the five-year forecast that ends inâŠ
â$87M ARR by Year 5, 45% net margins, and a 6% CAC payback period.â
All modeled across three growth scenarios.
With a bonus! A neat little chart that makes it look like the Fed should be keeping an eye on you.
Investors donât even flinch anymore. Theyâve built up a tolerance.
Because they know what this is:
A desperate attempt to distract from the fact that your early traction is weak, your GTM plan is vague, and your business model hasnât actually been tested.
This is spreadsheet jazz hands.
And in the harsh light of due diligence, jazz hands donât convert.
Why it doesnât work:
No connection to actual benchmarks â your CAC is fantasy, your churn is wishful thinking, and your margins are pulled from a SaaS pricing blog circa 2018.
No tie to real customer behavior â everything scales neatly, because nothing is based on how real humans act.
No grounding in your actual GTM motion â youâre assuming perfect efficiency, zero hiccups, and infinite funding.
Itâs giving⊠financial fan fiction.
Itâs giving⊠âmy runway is optimism.â
Itâs giving⊠âI have no idea how hard growth actually is.â
What to do instead:
Your financials slide should be a sanity check, not an hallucination.
Show your current pricing
Show what people are actually paying
Show how you plan to scale that in the next 6â12 months
For example:
âWe currently have 18 paid customers at $29/month. CAC from cold outbound is $91 with a 2.6-month payback. And weâre testing two new channels this month.â
Thatâs not a projection â thatâs a f_cking plan.
It tells investors:
People are buying
Youâre measuring
Youâre experimenting
Youâre grounded in reality
The goal isnât to look huge â itâs to look credibly on the path to huge.
So retire the fantasy spreadsheets.
Investors arenât here for your optimism. Theyâre here for your evidence.
And with that, Your HonorâŠ
The prosecution rests.
Closing Argument: Clean Up the Scene
If youâve made it this far, congratulations: youâve survived the inquiry.
Letâs sum up the entire case:
Your pitch deck isnât just a presentation. Itâs evidence.
Every slide either increases or decreases investor confidence.
The good ones? They build a case.
The bad ones? They bury you.
So before you send your next deck, ask yourself:
Does this slide clarify or confuse?
Does it impress or overcompensate?
Does it reveal insight, or just regurgitate startup clichés?
Because investors arenât just evaluating your idea.
Theyâre evaluating how you think.
Ditch the delusions, cut the cosplay, and â for the love of traction! â stop using those damn hockey sticks.
Thatâs it for this issue. Iâll be back in your inbox in two weeks.
Know someone whoâs pitching soon? Save them from slide-induced disaster â forward this their way.
Thanks, and take care.
âjdm



"Great breakdown of pitch deck pitfalls! Really highlights the need for clear, grounded slides to win investor trust."
đ§Ąthis! I hope every early stage founder reads it and applies your advice to their pitch deck!