Investor deck review: check your own deck the way an investor will, in 20 minutes

How an investor reads a deck

An investor reads a seed deck twice. The first pass is quick: the problem, the product, the team, the size of the ask. If the story holds, there is a second pass, and that pass decides whether you get a second meeting. On the second pass every number is a claim, and each claim is checked against the others.

Does the team slide agree with the cost line? Does the margin on the business model slide match the model? Does the ask buy the runway it promises? One mismatch is a question. Two, and the meeting stops being about your company and turns to your spreadsheet.

You can run that second pass yourself before anyone else does. You need the deck, your model if you have one, a calculator and about 20 minutes for a deck you know well.

This is the method behind my free pitch deck review. Below, it is worked on Fernbrook Analytics, a fictional seed company that sells daily inventory forecasts to restaurant groups. Its original 14-slide deck has a full sample read, so you can see where each step leads.

Step 1: list every number on every slide

Go through the deck slide by slide and copy every number onto one page, with its slide and the words around it: revenue, margin, headcount, salaries, the raise, runway, market size, customers, prices and dates. Include charts and footnotes.

Do not judge anything yet. The problems in a deck rarely sit on one slide. They sit between two slides that were written weeks apart, so the list has to be complete before it is useful.

Then mark each number with one of three labels. An input is something you chose, such as your price. An output is something the model calculates, such as cash at the end of Year 3. An outside fact comes from someone else, such as a figure from a market report. Inputs need a reason, outputs need a cell, and outside facts need a source with a date.

Step 2: trace each number to a model cell

Now open the model and write the cell reference next to every output on your list. A number with no cell was typed, and typed numbers are where decks and models drift apart. The deck gets edited the night before a meeting. The model does not.

Each line on your list ends in one of three states. The number matches its cell, and you move on. The number has no cell, so it gets one or it comes off the slide. Or the number disagrees with its cell, which is a mismatch, and every mismatch is a question you will hear in the room. No model yet? Every output on your list is a row it will need.

Step 3: redo the arithmetic

Wherever two numbers in the deck should combine into a third, do the sum yourself on a calculator: people times salary against operating costs, customers times price times 12 against revenue, monthly burn times months against the raise. Do not let the model check itself.

Start with headcount. A hiring plan is easy to change on a team slide and easy to forget in the cost line. Salaries alone should sit well under operating costs, because payroll taxes, rent, software and sales spending all come on top.

Step 4: run the six questions

Every read I write checks the same six questions. Run them against your list from step 1. Each one links to a worked answer in the seed deck guide.

• Runway: how many months does this raise really buy?
• Revenue drivers: is growth built from customers and price, or typed in?
• Unit economics: what does a customer cost, and when does it pay back?
• Headcount: do your planned hires appear in your costs?
• Use of funds: does the money reach next-round milestones?
• Tie-out: do your three statements agree?

Answer each one in a single line that names a slide or a cell. A question you cannot answer from the deck and the model together is one an investor will ask out loud.

Would you rather hand these six to someone who has never seen your deck? Send me the deck link and you get the answers on one written page.

Step 5: check the ask

The ask is the slide every investor reads closely, and it should be one calculation: the amount, the runway it buys and the milestones it reaches. Monthly burn times months of runway should land close to the raise. The milestones should be the ones your next round will be judged on.

Then check where the ask sits. On the last slide it makes the reader carry every number to the end. On slide 2, every slide after it reads as evidence for one specific plan. At pre-seed, with little or no revenue, the ask carries even more weight, and the pre-seed deck guide shows how to build it.

Step 6: count the market from the bottom up

Ask one question of your market slide: could you rebuild this number from your own tables? A share of a large industry, taken from a research report, says how big the world is, not how big your company can get. A bottom-up count does: the customers you can actually sell to, times your price, times 12.

Then divide the customers your plan reaches in its last year by that count. A plan that needs half the market in three years needs a good explanation. A small share is easier to defend.

Step 7: write it up the way the read does

Now turn your notes into one page, in the same format I use for every read.

• Where investors will push hardest. Two or three questions, each tied to a slide and a number, each with the answer you would give.
• Two quick fixes. Changes you can make today, such as moving the ask to slide 2.
• What already holds up. So you know which slides to leave alone.

Every point names the slide, the number and the fix. “The financials feel aggressive” is not a point. “Slide 10 takes revenue from $144,000 to $960,000 on typed customer counts; add the sales plan behind them” is.

Check yours

Before the deck goes to anyone, tick each line.

• Every number in the deck is on one list, with its slide.
• Every output has a model cell; every typed number is linked or removed.
• Team size × average salary sits well under that year's operating costs.
• Customers × price × 12 equals the revenue on the revenue slide.
• Each of the six questions has a one-line answer that names a slide or a cell.
• The ask states amount, runway and milestones, near the front of the deck.
• The market is a count you can rebuild, with a share you can defend.

What a self-check misses, and what my read is and is not

A self-check has one weakness: you wrote the deck. You read what you meant, not what the slide says. A reader who has never seen the deck reads only the page, the way an investor does.

That is the job of my read. It is a consistency check, not an audit. I check that your deck and your model agree with each other, that the arithmetic on every slide works, and where an investor is most likely to push. I don't audit your data, value your company, or give legal, tax, accounting or investment advice. No read can tell you whether an investor will say yes. It tells you which questions are coming.

A second reader, on one page