Why you need a 10-slides deck for your startup/business idea + BONUS funny materials 😂

Verba volant, scripta manent (Roman proverb: Words fly, written stays)

We often get requests to review new business ideas, which is ALWAYS a HUGE honor though also an onerous task in terms of time and resources.

Like 99% of investors, venture builders and advisors out there, we don’t jump on calls without reading a simple deck (i.e. Google Slides so we can add comments, we personally really hate to receive Powerpoints, PDFs or Keynotes).

It’s even better when aside from reading a short deck we can test REAL software, even if it’s a working sample, MVP, beta, POC or whatever you want to call it ;)

As they often say in big companies:

Powerpoint doesn’t compile

Our favorite document is the typical 10 slides deck that Y Combinator and Sequoia have already explained how to build a million times

Here is YCombinators Deck

Here is Sequoia’s Deck

If your first feeling is:

• “oh my god this dude is so boring”
• “Who does he think he is?”
• “I’m too busy coding”
• “Why is he asking for it? Can’t we just call??”

It may mean various things and none of them is good:

• You are lazy
• You are a rookie
• You don’t realize that a lot of smart people will ask you for it
• You need a business co-founder to write the deck

So just get it done once and for all.

Actually you will need to keep improving it constantly but at least do an MVP in 10–15min :)

Thanks

Vincenzo

p.s. We were thinking about a one pager, which some investors ask for, though it’s not as easy to skim through as a deck to be honest and we don’t actually recommend founders to work on both. Investors and people that ask for both are weird anyways. I wonder how many top investors ask for a one pager. :)

BONUS Some funny cartoons about startup pitching

Your Idea is worthless, so don’t worry about sharing it! No one is going to steal it!