Pitch deck examples: 5 real decks that raised, scored like an investor

Every deck below was published by its founders or its company, linked where it appears. No redesigns, no "recreated" slides, no invented numbers.

Search for pitch deck examples and you get lists of 30 or 50 decks. Many of them are redesigns sold as templates, and their slide counts and round sizes disagree with each other. So I did the opposite: I took five decks that founders put out themselves, ran each one through the same review a founder gets here, and read every result.

The review scores seven categories from 1 to 10: problem, solution, market, traction, team, business model and the ask, and turns them into a score out of 100. Our bar for sending a deck to an investor is 60. I ran each deck three times; the score below is the middle run, with the range in brackets.

Deck	Year	Score	Clears 60?
LinkedIn, Series B	2004	70 (69 to 71)	Yes
Front, Series A	2016	64 (63 to 68)	Yes
Airbnb, seed	2008	56 (55 to 57)	No
Buffer, seed	2011	50 (50 to 55)	No
Uber, first deck	2008	49 (45 to 53)	No

Three of the five most famous decks on the internet would not clear the bar today. That is the most useful thing on this page, and the rest of it explains why.

LinkedIn, Series B (2004)

Published by: Reid Hoffman, on his own site, slide by slide with notes on what he would change. Raised: $10 million led by Greylock. Slides: 39 on Hoffman's page.

Scores: problem 5, solution 8, market 7, traction 9, team 9, business model 7, the ask 3.

What to copy. The traction slides. LinkedIn had no revenue, so the deck proves momentum another way: its share of registered users in its category grew from 54 percent to 73 percent in six months, shown as two pie charts side by side. The review called it "quantified and convincingly visualized for a pre revenue stage". The team slide works the same way: names, past companies and the investors already on board, so the reader can check every claim.

What to skip. The ask. The deck is titled Series B and never says how much, on what terms, or what the money reaches. Hoffman's own notes are worth reading here: he recommends 20 to 25 slides and says to close on your investment thesis, never on a slide that just says "Q&A".

Front, Series A (2016)

Published by: Mathilde Collin, the CEO, on Medium, with her own notes on the strong and weak slides. Raised: $10 million, the amount on its own funding slide. Slides: 21.

Scores: problem 6, solution 7, market 3, traction 9, team 8, business model 5, the ask 5.

What to copy. The proof. A monthly revenue chart, negative net revenue churn, and a cohort table under the headline "150% annual expansion". Then a slide that says it in four numbers: $1.3 million spent in 18 months to reach $1.4 million in annual revenue. That is the slide an investor screenshots.

What to skip. The market slide. It argues that Slack proved the space is big, and gives no number for the market at all, which is why it scored 3. A strong business with an unsized market still reads as a question mark.

Airbnb, seed (2008)

Published by: nobody, officially. The 14 slide AirBed&Breakfast deck is the version co founder Nathan Blecharczyk is reported to have shown in a 2011 talk; here is the commonly shared copy. Airbnb never released it as a file, so treat it as the best available version rather than a certified one. The ask on its last slide: a $500,000 angel round.

Scores: problem 4, solution 6, market 7, traction 5, team 7, business model 4, the ask 6.

What to copy. Two slides. The market slide shows the top down funnel investors expect: 2 billion trips booked worldwide, 560 million budget and online, 84 million as Airbnb's share. And the ask slide is the best of all five decks: the amount, a 12 month runway, and the milestone it buys, 80,000 transactions and $2 million in revenue.

What to skip. The proof. The traction slide is press logos and four testimonials, with no number of bookings, hosts or listings. The review's comment is the one I give most often: "put that figure on the slide". A press mention tells an investor someone wrote about you; a number tells them someone paid.

Buffer, seed (2011)

Published by: Buffer, on its own SlideShare account, titled "The slide deck we used to raise half a million dollars". Slides: 13.

Scores: problem 3, solution 5, market 3, traction 8, team 7, business model 7, the ask 2.

What to copy. One slide of numbers: 55,000 users growing 40 percent a month, 800 paying, $150,000 in annual revenue, 97 percent margins. Then the business model with real unit economics: 2 percent free to paid conversion, 5 percent churn, a lifetime value of $240. Few seed decks know their numbers this well.

What to skip. Everything around the numbers. The problem is "social media is big", not a pain a specific person has. The market is tweets per day, not the size of the scheduling tool market. And the deck ends on an email address: no amount, no use of funds. Buffer raised anyway, with its founders there to answer what the deck leaves open. A deck that arrives alone in an inbox does not get that chance.

Uber, UberCab (2008)

Published by: co founder Garrett Camp, on Medium, as "the very first pitch deck we created in late 2008". Slides: 25. This was the concept deck, before the company had cars or an app.

Scores: problem 7, solution 7, market 7, traction 5, team 1, business model 3, the ask 4.

What to copy. The problem. Taxi medallions cost around $500,000 while drivers make $31,000, there is no GPS link between rider and driver, and hailing is done by hand or phone. Specific, backed by a chart, and hard to argue with. It scored 7, the highest problem score of the five.

What to skip. It has no team slide. None. The review gave it a 1 and said what any investor would: "investors bet on founders first". The raise is one sub bullet on the last slide: "raise a few million". One of the most valuable companies of its generation has the lowest score here, and that is the point: a stranger reading this deck cold would stop at the missing team slide.

What about the Snapchat pitch deck?

About 900 people a month search for it, and the decks you find are not real. Snap's first investor, Lightspeed, put about $500,000 into the 2012 seed round, and a Lightspeed partner told PitchBook: "With Snapchat specifically, there was no deck. There were just these two kids at Stanford that were very hard to track down." Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew found Snapchat when it had fewer than 100,000 users and went looking for the founders. If a deck is labelled as Snapchat's seed pitch, someone made it later.

What the decks that cleared have in common

Put the five side by side and three patterns show up.

1. Traction is a number, not a logo. LinkedIn, Front and Buffer scored 8 or 9 on traction, with charts, percentages and named customers. Airbnb's traction slide was press logos and scored 5. If you have one strong number, it belongs on a slide of its own.
2. The ask is the weakest slide almost everywhere. Four of the five never put the amount, the use of funds and the milestone together on one slide. LinkedIn scored 3, Buffer 2. These founders could pitch in person and answer the question out loud. A deck read cold in under two minutes cannot.
3. A missing slide costs more than a weak one. Uber's missing team slide and Front's missing market number each cost more than any badly designed slide. The 10 slide format exists so nothing an investor needs is left out.

Two structures worth knowing

Sequoia's own guide lists ten sections: company purpose, problem, solution, why now, market potential, competition, business model, team, financials and vision. Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule puts a limit on it: ten slides, twenty minutes, no font smaller than thirty points. Neither is a law; Hoffman's 39 slides raised $10 million. Both are good defaults, and the checklist turns them into yes or no checks.

Questions founders ask

What is a good pitch deck example?

One the founders published themselves, so you know the slides and the outcome are real. LinkedIn's Series B, Front's Series A and Buffer's seed deck all qualify, and each is strongest on traction: numbers that prove people use and pay for the product. Copy how they show proof, not their design.

What is the 10/20/30 rule for pitch decks?

Guy Kawasaki's rule: a pitch should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and use no font smaller than thirty points. His ten slides are problem, solution, business model, technology, marketing and sales, competition, team, projections, status, and a summary with a call to action.

Is there a real Snapchat pitch deck?

Not for the seed round. A partner at Lightspeed, Snap's first investor, told PitchBook there was no deck, just two founders at Stanford who were hard to track down. Decks labelled as Snapchat's seed pitch were made later by someone else.

How many slides should a pitch deck have?

Fewer than most founders think. In DocSend's research, funded pre seed decks averaged 16 slides against 19 for decks that were not funded. The decks on this page run from 13 slides (Buffer) to 39 (LinkedIn), and Reid Hoffman recommends 20 to 25. What matters more is that nothing is missing: a clear ask and a team slide count for more than the slide count.

See how yours scores

Every score on this page came from the same review your deck gets, on the same seven categories. Upload your deck and see where it lands against LinkedIn, Front and Airbnb, free. If it clears 60, we put it in front of a real investor. If it does not, you will know which slide to fix first, and the red flags list shows the mistakes behind most low scores.