The 6 Most Powerful Pitch Deck Frameworks to Rock Your Investor Presentation

Use these story archetypes to next-level your investor deck

Nathan Beckord
The Startup
Published in
6 min readMar 19, 2021

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Pitching to investors can be intimidating.

These are the people who can determine the future of your business, and you’ve got plenty of competition.

So how do you set yourself apart? Make your presentation memorable. You need a pitch deck that’s going to grab their attention and convince them that your business is worth the investment.

I’ve seen about 5,000 pitch decks, and I’ve probably created a few hundred myself. I recently used my experience to give a presentation on creating memorable pitch decks for Visme. Here are my best tips for putting together a pitch deck that will jump out to investors.

Your Goal: Hook investors with a compelling story

Investors want to hear the story of how you’re going to change the world with your business — and how you’re going to make them a lot of cash along the way. When creating a pitch deck, you can make your presentation compelling by following certain time-tested narrative structures.

Here are the six most common story archetypes for pitch decks.

1. Problem/solution

Undeniably the most common type of story told in pitch decks, the problem/solution model is tried-and-true at getting results. With this story, you’ve found a solution to a pain point in the market.

Because of the problem/solution model’s universal nature, putting together a pitch deck with this story is easy enough: one slide describing the problem, and the next outlining your solution.

2. Traction

This story is all about the numbers. If you’ve got metrics showing potential for growth, then the traction story has big potential. Lead with those metrics: Is your customer base growing? How much does it cost to acquire a customer, and how much revenue can you get per customer?

If you use the traction story, lead with it in the first two slides of your presentation. Promising numbers can have a major impact on investors.

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Nathan Beckord
The Startup

CEO of www.Foundersuite.com. Fanatical about helping startups raise capital. Sailing and motorcycle junkie.