How to design a winning startup pitch deck in PowerPoint

How to craft a compelling, professional pitch deck in PowerPoint, slide by slide. Whether you're a founder or designer, this blog will help you communicate your startup’s vision with clarity, creativity, and confidence.

When you’re pitching your startup to investors, your presentation can break or mess up your chances. A well-designed pitch deck not only communicates your ideas but also builds trust and excitement for your business. Here you will learn and explore the ideas of how to design a professional and impactful startup pitch deck for your next presentation in a PowerPoint–even if you are not a designer!

Here we will discuss first what a startup pitch deck is, key slides that every deck should have, why PowerPoint can be a better option for a pitch deck, tips for visual design & storytelling, and free resources to enhance slide design.

What is a startup pitch deck?

A pitch deck is a short presentation of your business that demonstrates your business in a visual manner that highlights the problems, solutions, business model, traction, team, and so on.

10 Key slides every pitch deck must have:

Cover Slide – Company name, logo, tagline

Problem – What problem are you solving?

Solution – How your business can solve this problem

Market Opportunity – Current market size and growth

Product Demo – Screenshot and mockups 

Business Model – How you make money

Traction – Metrics, growth, or milestones

Go-to-market Strategy – How you will reach or attract customers

Team – Key members and their expertise

Ask – How much funding and where will you use it 

Why should PowerPoint for pitch decks?

PowerPoint is a widely used software, it is a versatile and popular tool that gives users to use its tools easily, so anyone can easily adjust or create layouts. It is also compatible with most systems such as Google Slides. 

Step-by-step guide to create a pitch deck in PowerPoint

Step 1: Choose a Grid layout: 

Start with grid layouts so you can be consistent with each slides. You can enable grid on slides and can adjust manually so your company logo, footer, or title of slides can be consistently placed on each slide, which shows professionalism and consistency. 

Step 2: Use the Slide Master: 

In the slide master, you can set globally your fonts, colors, and layouts so it will save your time and you can design a consistent design. 

Step 3: Design individual Slides:

Design your slides using bold headlines, high-contrast colors, icons, and visual elements instead of using too much text. 

Tips for visual design and storytelling

Use only 2–3 primary colors

Your deck should tell a story of your brand

Keep it simple, don’t put all the information, just make it clutter-free

Use bold typography for important numbers and stats

Free Resources:

Icons: Flaticon, thenounproject

Illustration: undraw, freepic

Colors Palettes: Collors.co

Free fonts: Google fonts

Ultimately, designing a pitch deck in PowerPoint doesn’t need to be complicated. Focus on clear messaging, clean visuals, and be confident to tell about your brand. If you need us to design your pitch decks, contact us to work with you for your next pitch.