A pre-seed deck is not a seed deck with smaller numbers. The bar is different: pre-seed investors fund the founder + the wedge, not the metrics, because the metrics don't exist yet. This playbook walks the 10 slides that pre-seed checks get written on, with the YC + Sequoia archetypes, the gotchas that scare first-time founders, and the agent prompts that draft the hardest slides (market sizing, competitive landscape, the team narrative).
Outcome
A 10-12 slide pre-seed deck and a 1-page memo. Both share a single narrative spine. A target investor list of 30-50 names with intro paths. You're ready to send the deck the day you finish.
Time1-2 weeksDifficultyintermediateForFirst-time founders raising a pre-seed round.
Top to bottom. Each step has tasks, pointers, gotchas.
01 / 10
Write the 1-page memo before you touch a slide
4-6 hr
The deck is a compression of the memo, not a substitute for it. Write the memo first: 1 page covering problem, wedge, why-now, why-you, what-you'll-do-with-the-money. If the memo doesn't make sense as prose, the deck won't fix it. Investors who say 'just send me the deck' are still building the memo in their head from the deck — make it easy.
Tasks
Write 2-3 sentences on the problem (specific, not 'X market is broken')
Write 2-3 sentences on the wedge (the narrow first-version that gets you to 'someone pays')
Write 1 sentence on why-now (what changed in the world that makes this possible/urgent)
Write 2-3 sentences on why-you (why this team, this problem, this approach)
Write 2-3 sentences on the plan (with $X, do Y, by Z, and reach milestone M)
Cap the whole thing at 1 page. Cut everything that isn't load-bearing.
If you can't articulate the wedge in one sentence, you don't have one yet. Pre-seed investors disqualify on vague wedges fast.
'Why now' is the slide most pre-seed founders punt on. Investors read it as 'do you understand the world you're entering'. Don't punt.
02 / 10
Draft the title slide and the 1-line pitch
2-4 hr (most of it on the 1-liner)
The title slide does two jobs: tell the investor what you do in one line, and brand you so they remember you next week. The 1-line pitch is the hardest sentence you'll write. Spend a day on it. Test it on 5 strangers — if they can't repeat it back, it's broken.
Tasks
Write 5 versions of the 1-line pitch ('We're building X for Y so they can Z')
Test each on 5 people: can they repeat it back? Does anyone ask 'wait, what?'
Pick the version that survives without follow-up questions
Add company name, founder names, contact email, date on the title slide
Pick a deck cover that signals 'real company' without being slick — investors pattern-match on overproduced decks
Gotchas
Avoid the 'Uber for X' trope unless X is genuinely structurally similar to ride-share. Investors have heard 200 of those.
A clever wordplay tagline reads as marketing-y. Pre-seed wants a clear noun-verb-noun, not a slogan.
03 / 10
Draft the problem slide with a specific user, not a market
2-3 hr
Generic problems read as research-paper abstracts. The strongest problem slides describe a specific person doing a specific thing today and the specific moment it sucks. 'A 12-person sales team uses 4 spreadsheets to track outreach and the VP loses 3 hr/week reconciling them' beats 'sales tracking is broken'.
Tasks
Pick a specific user archetype (role, company size, what they do)
Describe a specific moment of pain (when, what they tried, what failed)
Quantify the pain in time, money, or risk (be honest — exaggeration backfires on diligence)
Show one piece of evidence: a quote from a customer interview, a screenshot, a stat
Cap the slide at 30 words of body copy + 1 image / quote
Gotchas
'Pain point' is a tell that you're describing a market category, not a problem. Investors notice.
Showing 5 problems on one slide reads as 'we don't know what we're solving'. Pick one.
Agent prompt for this step
Draft the problem slide.
Read the Brief. Output a single problem slide with:
1. A 6-12 word headline that names the problem in plain language
2. A 1-2 sentence description of a specific person doing a specific thing today
3. A quantified pain (time, money, or risk)
4. ONE piece of supporting evidence (a verbatim quote from interviews, or a stat with source)
Constraints:
- 30 words max in the body
- No 'massive market', no 'broken', no 'pain point'. Concrete language.
- If the pain is not quantified, flag it and ask the user for a number.
04 / 10
Draft the wedge slide: what you ship in v1, who pays first
3-5 hr
Pre-seed funds the wedge, not the platform vision. Your wedge slide answers: 'on day 1, what is the smallest thing you ship, who is the first person who pays you, and what do they pay for'. If you can't answer that crisply, you don't have a wedge yet — you have a category.
Tasks
Write the v1 product description in 1 sentence
Name the specific first customer profile (industry, size, role)
State the price + the unit (per seat / per month / one-time / usage)
Show the wedge-to-platform path in 1 line: from this beachhead, the natural next thing is X
If you have a working prototype, screenshot it on this slide
Gotchas
'We start broad and narrow as we learn' is not a wedge. Pre-seed investors disqualify decks that can't name a first customer.
Naming the platform vision before the wedge inverts the order. Wedge first, platform second, or the deck reads as fantasy.
05 / 10
Draft the market size slide without made-up numbers
3-4 hr
Pre-seed market sizing is bottom-up: from your wedge price * realistic-near-term customers * realistic conversion = your serviceable obtainable market in years 1-3. Top-down ('the global X market is $50B') reads as you Googling Gartner. Investors discount it.
Tasks
List the addressable customer count for your wedge (be honest — count specific identifiable accounts)
Compute SOM = wedge_price * realistic_year_3_customers * realistic_conversion
Compute SAM = the broader segment your platform can grow into
Compute TAM = the full market if everything works
Cite ONE source per number (BLS, Census, industry report, your own customer-list count)
Show the bottoms-up math on the slide, not just the final TAM number
TAM = $X billion sourced from a single Statista chart is an instant credibility hit. Investors who fund pre-seed have seen 1000 of those.
If your bottoms-up SOM is under $10M and you're pitching VCs, you have a wedge problem or a TAM problem. Investigate before sending.
06 / 10
Draft the why-now slide: what changed in the world
2-3 hr
Why-now is the slide that distinguishes 'we have an idea' from 'this idea has a moment'. It cites 1-3 things that changed recently (regulation, technology, a behavioral shift) that make the wedge possible or urgent now in a way it wasn't 3 years ago. If your why-now is weak, the deck reads as a startup that could have been built any year.
Tasks
List 1-3 things that changed in the last 1-3 years that make this possible/urgent
Cite each with a specific source (regulation date, model release, market data)
Tie each change directly to your wedge: 'because X happened, customers can now do Y'
Avoid generic 'AI is changing everything' framings — be specific about the change
Gotchas
'AI' as a why-now is too generic. Specify which capability (e.g. 'long-context models hit 1M tokens in 2024, which makes X feasible at price Y for the first time').
If your why-now is 'COVID', 5 years on it's stale. Find the underlying behavioral shift COVID accelerated.
07 / 10
Draft the team slide: why this team, this problem
2-3 hr
Pre-seed is a bet on the team. The team slide answers: 'why are these the people who solve this'. Skill match is table stakes; founder-problem fit is the signal. A 22-year-old PhD shipping their dissertation as a product is founder-problem fit. Two senior engineers who 'wanted to start a company' and picked a market is not.
Tasks
List 2-3 founders with 1-2 lines each: their relevant background + the link to this problem
Show prior shipping evidence (companies / open source / academic work / customers shipped to)
Skip 'former Googler' / 'ex-McKinsey' framings unless the role is directly relevant
If you have advisors who matter, include them with 1 line each — but only if they actually matter
Avoid filler 'team' headshots if the team is 2 people — overstated team density reads as padding
Gotchas
Listing 8 advisors on a pre-seed deck reads as substitution for founder credibility. Cut to 2-3 max.
If the founders don't have founder-problem fit, the deck has to do extra work elsewhere. Be honest about the gap.
08 / 10
Draft the competitive landscape slide without lying
3-4 hr
Saying 'we have no competition' is the worst answer. There's always a way customers solve this today (a spreadsheet, a manual process, a competitor product) — pretending otherwise tells investors you haven't done the work. The competitive slide names the real alternatives + your structural advantage in 1-2 lines per competitor.
Tasks
List 3-5 alternatives customers use today (including 'do nothing' / 'spreadsheet' if real)
For each: 1 line on what they do, 1 line on why customers leave them for you
Avoid the 2x2 with you in the upper-right corner — investors have seen the trick
Show your structural advantage (distribution, technology, founder access, pricing model) in 1 line
If a competitor is bigger and well-funded, address it head-on rather than pretending they're not there
Gotchas
Investors will pattern-match against the well-known competitors in your space within 5 seconds. If you don't name them, they assume you don't know about them.
A 2x2 chart with you alone in the upper-right is a meme. Don't.
Agent prompt for this step
Draft the competitive landscape slide.
Read the Brief. Output:
1. A list of 3-5 real alternatives customers use today (including 'do nothing' / 'spreadsheet' if real)
2. For each: 1 line on what they do today, 1 line on why customers might leave them for our wedge
3. Our structural advantage in 1 line (be honest — vague 'better UX' is not a structural advantage)
Constraints:
- No 2x2 with us in the upper-right
- Do NOT claim 'no competition'. Find the real status quo.
- If a named competitor is much bigger, mention it explicitly and explain why we don't get crushed.
09 / 10
Draft the ask slide: how much, what for, what milestones
2-3 hr
The ask slide is the closing slide and the most read. It answers: 'how much are you raising, at what milestone does the next round happen, and what do you need to ship to get there'. Vague asks ('we're raising a pre-seed') tell investors you haven't decided. Specific asks ($1.5M to ship v1 + 5 paying customers in 12 months) tell them you have.
Tasks
Decide the round size (typical pre-seed: $500K-$2M)
List the 3-5 milestones the round funds (specific: 'ship v1 by Q2', '5 paying customers by Q3', '$10K MRR by month 12')
Show the burn implied (team size, runway in months — investors do the math anyway)
Show the planned next round (Seed) timing and what you'll show then
Asking for $5M+ at pre-seed is a red flag unless the team is repeat-founder. Pre-seed checks at most pre-seed funds top out at $1M.
Milestones with no dates aren't milestones. Be specific or investors will discount your timeline by 50%.
Listing 'marketing' as 30% of use-of-funds at pre-seed reads as you not knowing how to acquire customers. Pre-seed is mostly engineering + founder-led sales.
10 / 10
Polish, send, and track in DocSend
1 day polish, ongoing send + track
Once the slides are drafted, the polish pass is real work: typography consistency, every slide under 30 words of body copy, every chart legible at 50% size (investors browse on phones). Send via DocSend so you can see who opens, who shares, and which slide they linger on — that data tells you which investor is genuinely interested vs being polite.
Tasks
Run a typography pass: 1 font family, 2-3 sizes max, no italic-bold-underline pile-ups
Cap every slide at 30 words of body copy
Re-export every chart at 2x retina; check legibility at 50%
Generate a DocSend link with view tracking + email-required (filter scrapers)
Send to a 3-5 person 'friendly' list first, get critique, iterate before sending to target investors
Track DocSend analytics weekly: which investors opened, who shared internally (multiple opens from same firm)
Pre-seed investors disqualify decks longer than 12 slides. Cut.
Sending the deck as a PDF attachment via email gets buried. DocSend links read as 'this founder is organized'.
If a deck is opened by 2-3 people from the same firm in 24 hr, the partner is doing diligence. Move fast.
Hand the template to your agent
Workspace-wide agent prompt.
Paste this into your agent's permanent system prompt so the agent reads, writes, and maintains the template's surfaces as you work through the steps.
Agent system prompt
You are an agent on the "Write a pre-seed pitch deck" playbook workspace.
Your role: maintain the four surfaces (Slides, Brief, Pointers, Investor list) as the user works through the 10-step playbook.
Cadence:
- When the user updates the Brief, regenerate any slide draft that depends on the changed section as a draft (don't overwrite finalized slides).
- When the user marks a slide Final, lock the draft fields and freeze the word count.
- When the user adds a new investor to the list, look up their portfolio for similar-stage / similar-sector bets and propose intro paths.
- When the user marks an investor Pass, capture the cited reason in the Brief's pattern-matching log.
First MCP tool calls:
1. list_surfaces(workspace_slug="write-a-pitch-deck-for-pre-seed")
2. get_doc(workspace_slug="write-a-pitch-deck-for-pre-seed", surface_slug="brief")
3. list_rows(workspace_slug="write-a-pitch-deck-for-pre-seed", surface_slug="slides")
Hard constraint: every slide draft is under 30 words of body copy. If your draft exceeds 30 words, cut it before saving.
FAQ
Common questions on this template.
How long should a pre-seed pitch deck be?
10-12 slides. Pre-seed investors read decks in 3-5 minutes; longer decks get skimmed and the back half is ignored. Aim for 10 if you can hit it, 12 if your story genuinely needs the room. Decks longer than 14 slides get disqualified at most pre-seed funds before the partner reads them.
Do I need traction to raise pre-seed?
No. Pre-seed by definition is pre-traction. What you need instead: a tight wedge, evidence you've talked to real customers (interview quotes are gold), a clear why-now, and founder-problem fit. Some pre-seed investors do want a working prototype or 1-2 design partners — read their site to know.
What's the most common reason pre-seed decks get rejected?
Vague wedge. Decks that describe a category instead of a v1 product get filed under 'come back when you've narrowed'. The fix: name the first customer profile, the first version of the product, and the first dollar — specifically. Other common reasons: top-down TAM with no bottoms-up math, 'no competition', ask without milestones.
Can my AI agents help write the deck?
Yes for drafting + research + tightening copy. Agents are good at: pulling competitor data, drafting first-pass slide copy from the brief, compressing 50-word paragraphs to 25 words, fact-checking market-size citations. Not good at: the founder narrative on the team slide, the wedge decision, the why-now insight. Those are yours.
How much should I raise at pre-seed?
$500K-$2M is the typical band for first-time founders. Repeat founders sometimes raise $3M-$5M. Optimize for runway-to-the-next-credible-milestone, usually 18-24 months. Raising too little means you re-raise in 9 months without enough progress; too much triggers higher next-round expectations.
Open this template as a workspace.
We mint a fresh copy in your org with the steps as table rows, the pointers as a separate table, and the brief as a doc. Bring your agents, start checking off boxes.