Article · 15 min read

What Investors Look For in a Pitch Deck (Seed & Series A)

CRV Free Intermediate

CRV is a top-tier US fund, and this piece draws the exact line your question asks about: it states plainly that detailed financial models belong in supporting materials, not the core deck, and that Series A adds them as an appendix. It also tells you which numbers actually move each stage (NRR still ranges wide at seed; ARR, sustained growth, gross retention, and unit economics carry Series A), so you know what belongs on the slide versus behind it.

  • Complex financials, patents, and detailed models go in supporting materials or an appendix, never the core deck
  • Seed still funds a strong team plus early traction; the bar has risen, so a deck alone rarely clears it
  • Series A demands hard data: real ARR, sustained growth, strong gross retention, and healthy unit economics
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The question it answers

  1. What financial numbers actually belong on the deck versus the data room?

Read with it

  1. This is a working Indian seed VC (Blume backed Unacademy, Purplle, Slice) writing down what it actually looks for, slide by... Blume Ventures Article · 20 min read High Pitched Assessments: the exhaustive list of what makes a good pitch deck Blume Ventures
  2. This is the data-room number, not the slide: a free, download-and-fill spreadsheet from a Point Nine partner that builds MRR... SaaStr Template · 20 min setup SaaS Financial Plan 2.0 (Christoph Janz's downloadable model) Christoph Janz (Point Nine Capital)
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