Guy Kawasaki presented the "10/20/30 rule" in 2005: 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30-point font. 20 years later it's still valid. A short deck forces you to tell only the essential.
In 2026 a deck is still the first contact with most investors. A good deck gets a second meeting — a bad one doesn't. Here's what each of the 10 slides should contain.
Slide 1: Cover
Content:
- Company name
- One sentence ("we do X for Y")
- Contact name and title
- For the investor: date and the meeting
Avoid: logos covering half the slide, mottos, team photos.
Good example: "Innovaidor. AI-assisted fail-fast tool for concept development. Markus Sjöberg, founder & CEO."
Slide 2: Problem
Content:
- The concrete problem you solve
- Why it matters
- What happens if it's not solved
Avoid: abstract "efficiency", "innovation", "future".
Good: "First-time founders spend on average 6 months validating an idea before building. That's too long — 47% of them quit before their first paying customer." (Source: [statistics or own research])
Slide 3: Solution
Content:
- One sentence describing your product
- Concrete visualization (screenshot, prototype)
- 3 main features — no more
Avoid: words "platform", "ecosystem", "synergy".
Good: "Innovaidor is an AI chat tool that critically spars concepts, prepares user interviews, and generates handoff documents to building tools."
Slide 4: Market
Content:
- TAM (Total Addressable Market)
- SAM (Serviceable Available Market) — your reachable part
- SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) — realistic 3-year goal
Give numbers with reasoning, not just "billion-dollar market".
Avoid: generic "AI market grows 200% per year" without source.
Good: "TAM: 2.4M first-time founders in Europe, average €200/month tools budget. SAM: 480K in EU Nordics. SOM: 5K paying customers in 3 years."
Slide 5: Product / demo
Content:
- Live demo (30–60 sec video) or 3 screenshots of the user journey
- User voice if possible (testimonial clip)
This is the slide where the investor's eyes light up — or don't. Invest in it.
Slide 6: Business model
Content:
- How you make money (subscription, transaction, advertising, etc.)
- Pricing (tiers, prices)
- Unit economics (CAC, LTV, margins)
Avoid: abstract "multiple revenue streams".
Good: "SaaS, €25/mo Starter / €49/mo Pro / €149/mo Team. Stripe payment, anonymized metrics in Matomo. Target CAC: €75, target LTV: €300."
Slide 7: Traction
Content (if you have any):
- User count, growth
- Revenue, MRR
- Partners, customers
- Ad CAC and conversion
- LinkedIn followers, email list
If nothing yet: be honest. Don't invent. Say: "We're pre-revenue. 25 user interviews done, 18 confirmed the need, beta begins Q3."
Slide 8: Competition
Content:
- Comparison table of 4–6 competitors
- Axes e.g. features, price, target group
- Clear differentiation
Avoid: "no competition" — if you say this, competition is the status quo (customer does without your product).
Good: a table with Innovaidor, ChatGPT, expensive consultants, free templates. Columns: price, AI activity, target group, documents.
Slide 9: Team
Content:
- 2–4 key people
- Photo, name, title
- One sentence on expertise
- Logos of past employers if relevant
Avoid: full team photo of 12 people, presenting your friends.
Good: two founders, each with a one-sentence "why this person for this role".
Slide 10: Funding need + plan
Content:
- How much you're raising
- Where the money goes (e.g., 50% product, 30% marketing, 20% premises and other)
- Timeline (12–18 month runway)
- Which milestones you'll hit with this funding
Avoid: big ask without justification. Investors see if you ask for more than you need.
Good: "We're raising €500K pre-seed. 18-month runway. Goals: 200 paying customers, €80K MRR, certified with 3 partners. Seed round in 18 months."
What to leave out
Classic investor-comms mistakes:
- Too many slides. Over 12 = laziness.
- Too much text per slide. Over 30 words = reader fatigue.
- Animations. Wastes investor time.
- Too-big TAM without justification.
- Hockey-stick projection too early.
- "No competition" — always wrong.
Practical workflow with AI
- Innovaidor: fill Lean Canvas + BMC. Produces content base for each slide.
- Ask AI for 5 different versions of each slide (e.g., Slide 2 — Problem).
- Pick 1. Read aloud. Fix.
- Visual production: Pitch.com, Beautiful.ai, or Google Slides + Canva templates.
- Stress test: give the deck to AI, ask it to act as a skeptical investor and ask the 10 hardest questions.
Closing
A pitch deck isn't art — it's a communication tool. The goal is to get the second meeting, not funding directly. Keep it short, concrete, honest.
Start: write your own one-sentence "we do X for Y" this week. If you can't, don't build the deck — go back to Innovaidor and spar the concept.