What Is a Pitch Deck? Definition, Examples & Best Practices from Prolific, ElevenLabs, Supliful & Buffer
- Ramesh Krishna
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
What Is a Pitch Deck?
A pitch deck is a concise, structured document that explains your startup’s purpose, value proposition, and investment potential in an impactful way. Pitch Decks can make or break when it comes to funding and thus a lot of effort usually put in before showcasing it
While pitch decks are commonly used as visual aids during investor presentations, the strongest pitch decks are self-explanatory documents that can stand on their own.
To make a pitch deck self-explanatory, it must be simple, well-organized, and story-driven. The best-practice examples of a high-performing pitch deck use the help of visuals, which enables the founder to present complex concepts, market insights, as well as the measures of traction, on a small number of slides.
Essential Pitch Deck Elements (Based on Successful Pitch Deck Examples)
Below are the key pitch deck components, derived from recent successful pitch decks by companies such as Prolific, ElevenLabs, Supliful, and Buffer.
1. Problem and Solution Slide (Example: Prolific AI)
The problem and solution slide is one of the most critical parts of a pitch deck because it sets up the purpose of the product. If the problem’s existence is clearly conveyed to the funders, they will start to empathize with the product. It is similar to the conflict in storytelling. The conflict grabs the audience’s attention. Once it is set up, the protagonist comes in to solve it with a solution.
To explain this further, we use the example of Prolific. Prolific, an online research platform that connects researchers with over 100,000 verified participants, demonstrated this clearly in its £25M Series A pitch deck. Prolific, in its pitch deck, opened by describing the real challenges researchers faced, including poor participant experience, weak research infrastructure, and unreliable tools for executing studies. Prolific effectively positioned its solution for these challenges by being the ‘trusted participant pool’, ‘the dedicated research platform’, and ‘the high-quality data’. This type of problem-solution pairing has proven effective for Prolific as it enables investors to understand immediately both the importance of the problem and its viability for a solution.
2. The Numbers Slide: TAM, SAM, and SOM (Example: ElevenLabs)
After establishing the definition of the problem and solution, a good pitch deck expresses the size of the opportunity using TAM, SAM, and SOM.
ElevenLabs, a company that focuses on voice AI research and deployment, executed this effectively in their pitch deck. They raised $19 million Series A using the pitch deck.
TAM (Total Addressable Market):
The total addressable market was identified to have more than 50 million content creators across the world by ElevenLabs. The market targets content creators for YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, podcasts, and blogs, right from amateurs to full-time content creators.
SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market):
From this large pool, ElevenLabs narrowed its focus to approximately two million professional creators who publish consistently, monetize their content, and treat content creation as a business.
SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market):
The company then refined the opportunity further by targeting around 100,000 YouTube creators with more than 500,000 subscribers. These creators produce high volumes of content, reach global audiences, and have stronger monetization potential.
ElevenLabs further narrowed its SOM to 10,000 caption-uploading creators, a segment already familiar with captions and multilingual reach making product adoption significantly easier. This group already understands the value of accessibility and global reach, making product adoption faster and more practical.
3.Competitor Matrix (Example: Supliful)
Competitor Analysis is essential in demonstrating how well a product or service may compete in a market. Although an idea may seem to be exclusive or have very few direct competitors, it is still imperative to demonstrate how companies similar to your product or service compete in the same industry.
One of the most successful methods for explaining this is through a competitor matrix, mapping existing competitors for various factors such as business model and simplicity of acquisition. It becomes simpler to see where current offerings lack and where new opportunities lie.
In this regard, one will analyze the instance of Supliful. Supliful helps creatives to start private-label brands for free. Additionally, it facilitates inventory management. The platform is helpful for the rising number of creatives who seek to monetize their online presence. Supliful raised $1.1M using this pitch deck, with the competitor matrix as a key element.
The competitor matrix typically maps existing platforms across two key dimensions. In this scenario, the two dimensions are the production process, which varies from large MOQs(Minimum Order Quantity) to on-demand production, and the distribution channel, which varies from retail to ecommerce. The typical brands are found in the large MOQs and retail sector. Here, a lot of investment is required initially. Moreover, such a scenario provides less flexibility for the content creators. The ecommerce sites using large MOQs still face less distribution hassle. However, these sites still entail risks for content creators. On-demand ecommerce sites like Supliful ease the entry process for content creators by averting initial inventory investment. However, their focus is only on logistics.
The biggest takeaway here is that there is a clear pain point in the market which is not being satisfied by a single platform that provides on-demand manufacturing, strong branding elements, and owner-operated stores.
4. Show your capability (Example: Buffer)
Even if you are in the ideation stage, it would be great if you can provide some numbers your product or service has achieved. Any form of traction helps. Most pitch decks include such metrics to showcase product quality, indicating that people are willing to use and value the product. This may include website traffic, subscribed users, and the number of people who have supported them through Kickstarter. In this case, Buffer started off emphasizing traction as opposed to other pitched fundraising stories to demonstrate validation within the market.
Buffer is a well-known online social media management tool to create, schedule, publish, and analyze content across various networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
They, in their pitch deck, focused on hard numbers like the number of paying users, revenue run rate, high margins, user growth rate, and user engagement.
These metrics quickly conveyed product-market fit, willingness to pay, and strong unit economics. For founders who find themselves in earlier stages of their entrepreneurial journey, it is not necessarily required to demonstrate traction in terms of revenue. Website traffic, waitlists, subscriptions, pilots, or even Kickstarter support may all qualify. The important thing is to demonstrate engagement from real users.
5. Team Slide and Execution Credibility
The team slide reinforces a startup’s ability to execute.A well-structured team slide shows how responsibilities are divided across product, growth, operations, or research, and demonstrates that multiple people are committed to the same mission. For investors, this signals execution strength and reduces perceived risk. Strong ideas matter, but strong teams determine outcomes.
Pro-Tips for Your Deck:
Add credible statistics to support the problem:Beyond stating the problem, include a reliable statistic that clearly indicates the prevalence or severity of the issue.
Be ambitious with TAM, SAM, and SOM:While being mindful of realism, don’t limit the vision to only current potential. Would Amazon have imagined where it is today when it first began?
Add a feature matrix along with a competitor dimension matrix:This helps investors quickly understand functional differentiation as well as strategic positioning.
12 slides is the sweet spot:Aim to concisely communicate the story within this number for maximum clarity and impact.
If you need help creating an impactful pitch deck, feel free to reach out here or email me at ramesh@rameshkrishna.com.
Here are Full Pitch Deck of Prolific, ElevenLabs, Supliful & Buffer:
1.Prolific AI:
2.ElevenLabs
3.Supliful
4.Buffer
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