Take the order from Sequoia's outline or YC's seed deck template, then lay it out in any slide tool you already use: the structure is the template, the design is the easy part. Sequoia's list (company purpose, problem, solution, why now, market, competition, product, business model, team, financials) is the flow investors expect, and YC's template shows the same story slide by slide with traction near the front. For the look, Canva's pitch deck gallery is free, Pitch has a template gallery and a free plan (Plus is EUR 10 a month paid yearly), and Gamma drafts a deck from your outline (free with 400 credits at signup, Plus $9 a seat a month). Check the result against Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule: ten slides, twenty minutes, no font smaller than thirty points. Before sending it to an Indian fund, read Blume's list of what makes a good deck. Rule: Sequoia or YC for the order, any tool for the look, ten slides.
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This is the canonical slide-by-slide template from the person who has read more pre-traction decks than almost anyone. Seibel's rule directly answers your question: put your single strongest thing right after the 'what you do' slide, so if you have no revenue but a great team or a sharp insight, that leads. He also insists you present any traction with real timeframes instead of a vague chart, which is exactly the honest signal a pre-traction founder should lean on.
A seed deck is 10 to 12 boring, legible slides: title, problem, solution, market, traction, team, ask. Lead with whatever is strongest.
With no revenue, your team slide and your non-obvious insight ('what do you know that everyone else doesn't') carry the deck, so move them early.
Show traction with dated timeframes and specific numbers, not a smoothed hockey stick, because investors are grading your thinking at this stage, not your metrics.
Kevin Hale's rule for a non-designer is three words: legible, simple, obvious. He argues an investor should grasp a slide's point in seconds, so the fix is not prettier gradients but fewer words, bigger type, and one takeaway per slide. It reframes design as clarity, which is exactly the bar a founder with no design skill can actually hit.
Guy Kawasaki's short, famous rule from his years hearing pitches as a venture capitalist: ten slides, no more than twenty minutes, no font smaller than thirty points. The fastest check on any template you pick.
This is a working Indian seed VC (Blume backed Unacademy, Purplle, Slice) writing down what it actually looks for, slide by slide, from the people who read hundreds of Indian founder decks a year. It is blunt about the mistakes that kill decks here: a vague problem statement, a team slide buried too deep, and no customer validation when Blume wants to see the product already live with signups. Use it as the reviewer sitting across the table before you send.
A slide-by-slide walk through Airbnb's actual 2009 seed deck (the one that raised $600K), covering all 14 slides from cover to financials and calling out exactly why the business model slide was the killer. It shows the discipline you are aiming for: the problem stated in three plain lines, the solution compressed to save money while traveling, one restatable point per slide. Study it as the worked example of the Sequoia skeleton, then copy the restraint, not the layout.
The de facto global standard for pitch deck structure, straight from Sequoia. The same outline Airbnb's founders used; if you follow one template, follow this one.
A gallery of presentation templates, pitch decks among them, built in Pitch, a slide tool made for teams that share and track decks. Pitch's free plan is EUR 0 forever and Plus is EUR 10 a month paid yearly.
Pitch's own pricing: Free at EUR 0 forever with 100 AI credits that do not renew, Plus at EUR 10 a month paid yearly with 500 AI credits a month and custom fonts.
Gamma drafts a presentation from a prompt or an outline. Its pricing page: Free with 400 credits at signup and up to 10 slides per prompt, Plus $9 a seat a month, Pro $18 a seat a month, Ultra $90, with export to PDF, PPTX and Google Slides on every plan.
This is the fastest zero-budget path to a clean deck: pick one template that already fixes your font pairing, color palette, and spacing, then just swap in your content. For a founder with no designer, starting from a professionally-set template removes the two hardest decisions (type and color) so you only have to write clearly.
