Each project arrives with its purpose, milestones and first tasks written out. Here is how the first three read.
One-page deck brief for this raise
Before opening a slide tool, write down the round size, the stage, the three investor types who will read the deck and the one belief each must leave with. Decks written without a brief drift into product tours, and a single page agreed with co-founders settles arguments about what belongs on the slides long before design time is spent.
First tasks
- Write the round size range and company stage in two lines
- List the three investor types who will read the deck first
- Write the one belief each reader type must leave with
- Rank your three strongest proof points from strongest down
- Share the brief with co-founders and record their sign-off
One-line company description test
Investors forward decks with a sentence of their own, and if your cover slide cannot supply that sentence, they will write a vaguer one. A one-line description that names the customer, the problem and what you do differently, tested on ten people outside the company, becomes the cover slide, the email subject and the opening of every later conversation.
First tasks
- Draft five one-liners naming customer, problem and difference
- Read each one aloud to ten people outside the company
- Ask each listener to describe the company back in their own words
- Put the winning line on the cover slide
Ten-beat story outline before design
Most weak decks are weak in their story, not their visuals: the market slide arrives before the reader cares about the problem, or the traction is buried on slide fourteen. Writing the deck first as ten plain sentences, one per beat from problem to ask, lets you fix the argument in a text document where changes cost minutes rather than hours of design.
First tasks
- Write one claim sentence for each of the ten story beats
- Cut any sentence that names a topic without making a claim
- Ask the agent to point out the weakest link in the argument
- Have one outsider read the outline and retell it to you
