Seed pitch deck help: the six questions investors test, worked on one sample deck

A seed deck is skimmed for the story and tested on the numbers

An investor's first pass through a seed deck is quick. What does the company do, for whom, how much is it raising, and why now? If the story holds, the deck gets a second pass, and the second pass is arithmetic.

Every read I write checks the same six questions on that second pass: runway, revenue drivers, unit economics, headcount, use of funds and tie-out. Each is a short calculation an investor can do on a phone, with numbers already on your slides. When one fails, the meeting moves from your market to whether your numbers can be trusted.

Below, each question is worked on Fernbrook Analytics, a fictional company that sells daily inventory forecasts to restaurant groups. Its deck and model are both on this site, so you can check every step. To see how a read writes this up on one page, open the full sample.

Runway: how many months does this raise really buy?

Runway is cash divided by monthly burn. Burn is the cash that leaves the bank each month after customers pay you, so take it from the cash flow statement, not the income statement. Revenue you have billed but not yet collected is not cash, and a growing company always has some of it.

The usual error is a runway figure left over from an older plan, or the raise divided by Year 1 burn when costs climb in Year 2. An investor redoes the division with your model's burn, and any gap becomes the first question.

Redo your runway claim from your model's cash flow. If the two disagree, fix the slide.

Revenue drivers: is growth built from customers and price, or typed in?

An investor won't argue with a revenue line. They ask what produces it. A revenue figure typed straight into a cell cannot answer that, so it reads as a hope. A figure built from drivers can: customers × price × 12 months, with each year's customers built from the number you win that year.

Once the drivers are on the slide, the questions move to the sales plan: which channel, at what cost, in what time. You can prepare for those. “Where did this number come from?” you cannot.

If your revenue grows by a fixed percentage each year, replace it with customers won and price. A growth percentage is an output of the plan, not an input.

Unit economics: what does a customer cost, and when does it pay back?

Two numbers answer this. The cost to win a customer is sales and marketing spend divided by the customers won that year. Payback is that cost divided by the gross profit one customer brings in each month. Use gross profit, not revenue: only what is left after serving the customer can repay the cost of winning them.

A payback that falls each year says selling gets cheaper as the company learns. If yours rises, say why on the slide.

Headcount: do your planned hires appear in your costs?

The team slide and the cost line are often written weeks apart, from different versions of the plan. Investors multiply them. People on payroll × average salary is the floor of your payroll, before payroll taxes, software or rent. If that floor sits above the operating costs in your model, one of the two slides is wrong.

Run this multiplication every time the team slide changes. If you would like all six checks run on your own deck, send me the deck. You get one written page back, and every point names the slide, the number and the fix.

Use of funds: does the money reach next-round milestones?

A use-of-funds chart says where the money goes. An investor cares more about what it buys: the milestone the raise reaches, when, and the cash left when you get there. Your next round is raised on that milestone, so write it as a number your model produces. “Expand into new markets” cannot be checked. A customer count or a revenue run rate can.

If the cash runs out before the milestone, the raise is too small or the plan is too big. Find that out before an investor does.

Tie-out: do your three statements agree?

Tie-out checks that the income statement, the cash flow statement and the balance sheet describe the same company. The test is one row on the balance sheet: total assets minus total liabilities and equity. It should read 0.00 in every year. When it doesn't, something was typed over or linked to the wrong cell, and every number downstream is in doubt. A model can tie out and still be wrong, so the check is the floor, not the finish.

Try it in the live model: switch on the typed-over cell and move the price. To build a model that ties out from the first row, follow the three-statement model, worked step by step.

Slide order for a seed deck: put the ask on slide 2

I move the ask to slide 2. On the last slide it arrives after the investor has formed a view. On slide 2, the amount, the runway and the milestones frame everything that follows.

In the sample read, the first quick fix was exactly this: move the ask (amount, runway, three milestones) from slide 14 to slide 2. The rebuilt Fernbrook deck runs in this order:

1. Title: what the company does, in one line
2. The ask: amount, runway and milestones
3. Problem
4. Product
5. Market, counted bottom-up
6. Business model
7. Revenue build
8. Unit economics
9. Team and costs
10. Financials, with the balance check

Each of the six questions has a home in that order: runway and use of funds on slide 2, revenue drivers on slide 7, unit economics on slide 8, headcount on slide 9 and tie-out on slide 10. You can page through all ten slides of the rebuilt deck. At pre-seed, with little or no revenue, the emphasis shifts, and what a pre-seed deck should show covers the changes.

Check yours: 12 lines to run before you send

Open your deck and your model side by side.

1. Write down the amount you are raising, exactly as the ask slide states it.
2. Take monthly burn for each year from your model's cash flow, not the income statement.
3. Divide the raise by that burn and compare the months with the runway your deck claims.
4. Confirm cash stays above zero to the end of the plan, and note how many months are left.
5. Rebuild revenue as customers × price × 12 for each year. It should match the slide.
6. Check that each year's customers come from customers won, not a typed growth rate.
7. Divide sales and marketing by new customers to get each year's cost to win one.
8. Divide that cost by monthly gross profit per customer to get payback in months.
9. Multiply the people on your team slide by the average salary in your model.
10. Compare that payroll with the operating costs for the same year.
11. Name the milestone the raise reaches, as a number, and the month you reach it.
12. Confirm the balance check reads 0.00 in every year, then change one input and check again.

For a slower pass that goes slide by slide, try the 20-minute investor deck self-check.

Have the six checked on your deck