What is a pitch deck, and how do you explain it to someone?

You want money, the investor’s job is to allocate it. The issue is the ratio of startups to investors. There are a lot more startups than investors.

That imbalance is key to your sanity. Founders want attention and investors have limited willingness to live. The power dynamic is now set.

Think of tinder dating. You both swipe right and one blanks. Who cares, right? But if you go on 20 dates with a person you are thinking about getting married. The question for all those in pursuit of love is getting the first date.

So you are an investor, you’re the female on Tinder and you have 3000 potential matches a year – it’s overwhelming. In this Tinder, there are no filters for height and not having a photo with a drugged-out tiger (exhausting) but that is what you want.

You have to go through every match and there are some really dumb ones. I mean, you like SaaS but the dude is all about pharma? Wtf? I mean, reading bios on Tinder is annoying, but actually, you are a Park Princess and are a lot pickier about what you want. You care about the guy’s prospects, how thoughtful they are etc. How do you tell?

Well, the Tinder peacocks figure this out and present themselves. They try and figure all the characteristics you like (#MajorFail) and preempt to you to get more interest vs the 3000 other peacocks.

A pitch deck is how the dudes try get a date with the investor, and if they know better they are going to get ignored 99% of the time. But they play the numbers and the ones that keep with it get the hook up.

The pitch deck is how the peacock gets attention and the first date. The peahen knows he is a “fixed upper” at seed, but if there is enough potential, they can work with it. Maybe they will get married and invest.

But literally, a pitch deck is a PowerPoint presentation that gets an investor interested enough to “want to know more” and do a call to see if they want to date and learn more. A decent one is about 20 slides and touches everything investors care about without being boring. That’s really hard.