The Only “Competition” Slide You’ll Ever Need in a Pitch Deck

My least favorite slide in every startup’s pitch deck is the “competition” slide. It’s always some version of the same basic concept, and it’s always wrong. Worst of all, none of the entrepreneurs (and, sometimes, the investors themselves) don’t seem to realize why it’s so wrong. Are you making the same mistake in your slide deck?

For reasons beyond my understanding, entrepreneurs and investors seem to have unanimously agreed that a startup’s competition slide should use either a “magic quadrant” layout (courtesy of Gartner), or, if you’re “sophisticated,” Steve Blank’s petal diagram. But both of those ways of thinking about the competition are fundamentally flawed. Here’s why:

Why the Magic Quadrant is inherently flawed

The above image is an example of AirBnB’s “magic quadrant” competition slide. Every magic quadrant slide follows the same basic principles. The axes get labeled differently depending on the value propositions being offered to the startup’s end-users, and within each quadrant, the entrepreneur includes the logos of different companies that do some part of what the startup is…