Entrepreneurs and the startup industry are familiar with the importance of a pitch deck. It’s the crucial presentation you make to potential investors. Also, the pitch deck has now entered other industries too, including large corporations, movie studios, ad firms, and sports agencies. If you’re unsure how to make one, you’re in luck. These websites collect pitch decks by successful startups and offer some as templates, so you can learn what they did right.
1. Billion Dollar Pitch Decks (Web): Pitch Decks of Billion-Dollar Startups
How did Airbnb convince investors to fund their product back in 2008? What was YouTube telling potential money-lenders to make them realize this will overtake Vimeo, DailyMotion, and other video hosting services? Billion Dollar Pitch Decks (BDPD) collects these early-stage pitch decks from startups that eventually were worth a billion dollars or are projected to.
It’s a simple website to browse, giving you a three-column grid of all startups listed alphabetically. Each panel has the company logo and name, a short description of what they do, links to their official website, and the original pitch deck. These presentations are hosted on slideshow-sharing sites like Slideshare.
It’s not always the first pitch deck from the startup, but it’s a make-or-break moment from an early point. You can’t download any of these as a template but adhere to the principles and then use something like Canva to create beautiful presentations.
BDPD also has a section to feature new startups that aren’t yet worth a billion dollars but have shared their pitch decks online. You can also subscribe to the BDPD newsletter for updates on new decks that they add every week.
2. Pitch Deck Hunt (Web): 150+ Successful Pitch Deck Examples
PitchDeckHunt is a simple, easy-to-browse directory of pitch decks from some famous and not-so-famous startups worldwide. These successful presentations got the companies a round of funding, so there is plenty to learn.
The directory boasts over 150 decks, sorted by categories such as tech, edtech, fintech, cannabis, sports, travel and events, SaaS, e-commerce, media, social, marketplaces, food and beverage, app, transport, healthcare, and proptech. You can also filter the pitches by the funding stage, between options like pre-seed, seed, Series-A, Series-B, and later stages.
Each pitch deck tells you about the company, its funding rounds, and other pertinent details. You’ll also find how much money was raised with the pitch deck in question in many cases. It’s lovely how all the information is to the point and doesn’t waste your time.
3. OpenDeck (Web): Check Pitch Deck Slides by Category
OpenDeck is a pitch deck curation project by OpenVC, a free and open gateway between investors and founders. It currently boasts of over 1200+ startup slides, with a unique way to see how the same type of slide was constructed by different startups.
Essentially, you will find that a pitch deck contains a few common types of slides. It can cover problem & solution, product, market, competition, validation, roadmap, financials, funding, business model, team, etc. In creating your own deck, you might be stuck for ideas in delivering one of these, rather than in the larger deck. OpenDeck will let you filter by these types of slides across all decks. So for example, you can see the problem & solution slides of Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox, and other major startups together for easy comparison and analysis.
Apart from this, OpenDeck also lets you filter pitch decks by funding year (2007 to 2021) and funding road (seed, Series A, Series B, Series C, Series D). You won’t get any other information about the deck’s effect for the startup.
Make sure to check out OpenVC’s other offerings too. The website has an excellent filterable directory of investors and a global map of funding. And their blog offers some useful insights for startup founders.
4. Slidebean & Pitch Deck Examples (Web): Pitch Deck Templates and Deck Editor
Slidebean is a web app to create your own pitch decks using templates of presentations by famous startups. The collection of famous decks is also available on a separate site, Pitch Deck Examples, without ever visiting Slidebean or creating an account.
At Pitch Deck Examples, you’ll find pitch decks for brands like Facebook, Buzzfeed, Airbnb, Moz, Snapchat, and other known startups. On each page, you’ll find a detailed write-up on the company’s state when the deck was made and its reasons. You can also download the full deck as a free PDF or open it as a template in Slidebean. There are also a few generic templates, like a blogger’s kit.
When you open any template in Slidebean, you’ll need to sign up for a free account and then go through the editor. Slidebean also has a wizard that guides you through the basic 14 slides that most pitch decks need, so you can fill in your information. Then you have two spaces in the editor to customize your deck: outline (for information and data) and design (to change how it looks). Slidebean is a paid service, so if you’re happy with what you make, you’ll need to subscribe to one of its plans to use the final pitch deck.
5. Alexander Jarvis (Web): 580+ Pitch Decks and In-Depth Analysis
Alexander Jarvis is a startup mentor and consultant for founders and runs a firm to make custom pitch decks. On his blog, he has collected over 580 pitch decks from various successful startups and analyzed them for anyone to learn what to do and what not to do.
You can filter through the large directory based on stage (angel, grant, growth, seed, Series A-F), the funds raised, country, and category (marketplace, ad tech, media, fintech, enterprise, transportation, social media, etc.). Each panel has a short description of the startup and how much funds it raised.
But the real juice lies in Jarvis’s expert in-depth analysis. For every deck, he does research to find out more about the brand and their journey, summing it up in a brief description. He also adds valuable information when necessary. A great example is the court testimony of Google CEO Eric Schmidt on how he bought YouTube.
Jarvis also analyzes each deck, adding a little commentary under the slides and a summary of what they did right and wrong. It’s an invaluable resource for anyone wondering why pitch decks are made the way they are.
Don’t Pitch, Tell a Story
The pitch deck examples and templates from these sites are basic slideshows. You can use any presentation creator like PowerPoint or Canva to make these. While the design is essential, there is one common learning from the most successful startup decks: you need to tell a story.
Too often, as a founder, you can get caught up in trying to talk up your product or justify why it’s going to be successful. But don’t get caught up in your vision. Instead, focus on telling a story about why your startup matters.
