I read Sam Altman helped Airbnb with their deck and told them the market was too small so they arbitrarily changed ‘m’ to ‘b’. ;)

To be clear… I hate decks and I have as startup which fixes them for founders.

You can theoretically get away with no deck, but that requires being able to be highly structured and have all the answers learnt. A deck forces you to think about ~12 questions/slides (you know what I mean) if you take the Sequoia format. You have to to think how to address all the things like market size, timing etc. Most founders just don’t know what to talk about.

So yeah, what you say applies to the *best* founders. Yes, some VCs blogged recently they funded people without decks, but they had a really fab story. I know founders in SF (eg secret) that didn’t have a deck, but they were repeat founders.

Mere mortal founders are going to read this and ignore the *best* bit. ;)

I make huge financial models and founders typically say ‘It’s a lot to deal with but it forces me to think about questions I wouldn’t have thought of.’

After a few mins talking I can pitch a startup off the cuff, but not because I’m a genius, but I’ve done it so many times and I have the list of talking points ingrained in my noggin.

Pitch decks aren’t so bad if you approach them right which is writing down your story in bullet points and making them the header. The content just supports the story. If you know your story to pitch without a deck and have done the work, then a deck is just a little more work.