Start with a human story about the problem and the benefit your startup provides. It shows the listener whether you are an authentic entrepreneur who found the problem and insight honestly. Investors will be assessing your true passion and reasons for starting the company.
Objective: Hook the listener as quickly as possible.
Who’s on your team today, and what are their backgrounds? Investors will assess:
1) if this group is uniquely qualified to solve this problem.
2) if they have what it takes to recruit the world-class team necessary to build any enduring company.
The order of the team slide is a personal preference. Some people prefer to save it for the end. We believe it should be at the beginning of the presentation because it informs the audience of who is pitching and is usually one of the stronger aspects of any pitch.
Objective: Introduce yourself and your current team in a way that helps the investor understand why this is the best group to solve this particular problem.
Zoom out and talk about a greater trend that’s happening in the world, then zoom in on the opportunity (pain) you are tackling. If the investor doesn’t believe this is an exciting problem to solve or that the time is now, nothing else you say in the rest of the pitch matters.
Objective: Establish common ground. Show there is a clear market opportunity happening in the world today (what we call a “disruption in the force” at Unusual). You are looking for nodding heads and agreement that now is the time to solve it.
Classic TAM/SAM/SOM market slide (see our Unusual tool HERE). The market needs to be big enough that investors don’t need to do the math. Revenue potential should be in the billions of dollars (not necessarily today, but in a timeframe that is relevant for this company).
At the same time, it is equally important to present a segmented view of the market and at least a hypothesis of where the company will be initially focused.
For TAM/SAM/SOM, we highly recommend a bottoms-up analysis to clarify your assumptions. Example TAM: 50,000 companies buy DevOps tools today. If 2% of the market purchases $100k worth of subscription software from us, we will be a $100M ARR business in seven years.
Objective: The investor feels “greed” for the opportunity and isn’t questioning market size — leave no doubt that the prize is worth the fight.
Having said that, don’t jeopardize your credibility by exaggerating the market potential for what you are building (this is a common mistake).
Explain what you do in one or two slides. First, explain it in 25 words or less. Next, highlight the aspects of your solution that are particularly important to a customer and difficult to build.
Note: don’t go into every technical detail. If the investor wants to dive deeper, she will ask for a separate session. At this point, the investor is going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you can do what you say you can do. She is mostly deciding if the solution is compelling in theory.
Objective: Two objectives for this section. First, explain your idea for the company in plain English. At Unusual, we refer to this as the “Vision” visual, as it is the big picture for what the company will eventually do. Venture investors want to see that founders have a clear concept for the chapter book that will ultimately be written.
Second, dive into the heart of what is unique about your solution. What will enable you to win? What is difficult for competitors to replicate?
This should consist of a visual comparing your solution with alternatives. The comparison criteria should be ones customers use when making a buying decision, and should highlight where you are differentiated. This is often a 2×2 or a Harvey Ball chart. We suggest you use one of the two.
Objective: Enable the investor to easily see that your product is superior on the dimensions that matter most to the buyer/user.
How will you price and distribute your product? Share who you are selling to in this next phase to achieve the traction goals you have for the business. This is NOT the time to focus on the big vision idea. In fact, it is the opposite. You told them you are going to take Paris in Slide 5; now tell them where your Normandy is.
To the extent you have successful customers to highlight, introduce one or two additional slides here and as part of the next section. It is critical that you explain the economics of your solution from the customer’s perspective.
Consider this your opportunity to explain:
Objective: The investor clearly understands who the target user/buyer is for this product. It’s worth commenting on organizational design and product strategy that facilitate your intended go-to-market (direct sales, inside sales, free trial, open source). That way, the investor can get a sense of the associated costs (and capital) required to execute.
How you talk about traction depends on stage, but the goal is always the same: to show that your insight has been validated in the market.
At this stage, investors don’t expect revenue, they expect a high rate of learning. Highlight the work you’ve done to understand your user and buyer. Who have you spoken with? What patterns have you uncovered? Show that you’re segmenting the market thoughtfully — not treating every conversation as equal.
Objective: Demonstrate curiosity, rigor, and progress toward a clear, desperate who.
Most Seed-stage founders are still early in their customer discovery, and that’s okay. What matters is focus. Explain which part of the market (your SAM and SOM) you’re pursuing and why. Show evidence — conversations, prototypes, and design partner engagements — that led you to believe you’re solving a meaningful problem for a specific segment.
Objective: Prove you have a strong thesis about your initial use case and can clearly articulate why customers would buy.
By Series A, the conversation shifts from validation to repeatability. Your goal here should be to show customer logos and describe the stage of each engagement, whether it’s early discussion, pilot, or live deployment. Ideally, include two short case studies that show the problem, your solution, and measurable ROI.
Objective: Communicate that you’ve reached product-market fit: 8–10 active customers who are delighted and vocal about their love for your solution, a robust pipeline of similar prospects, and how the referenceable users will make your sales motion repeatable.
In one slide, create a visual representation of the execution goals for the company for the next 24 months in terms of:
Objective: Summarize the company’s key goals for this period and the capital required to achieve them.
On one level, this is a financial decision they are making, so assist the investor in answering the question: “What will the company look like when it needs to raise money again?”
They will use this information to decide if this financing is setting up the business for a future successful fundraise (a significantly higher valuation at the next step in the journey).
We are not suggesting this is the only way to structure a good investor pitch! Based on our experience, these are the key aspects that founders need to focus on, and this is a structure we’ve seen work very well thousands of times.
Regardless of how you structure your presentation, realize that the venture capital profession has a distribution curve just like any other. There are average venture capitalists, below-average venture capitalists, and premier venture capitalists. You don’t want an average venture capitalist the same way you wouldn’t want an average heart surgeon. As a founder, you want and deserve the best. When you look at the track records of the premier venture capitalists, they consistently look for four things.
Fundraising
