Checklist for Founders: What an Investor Wants to See in Your Pitch Deck

27.07.2025

There is no shortage of content written about pitch decks — you can find dozens of guides, templates, and tips on structure, visual style, and storytelling. But since we are lawyers, in this post we will focus on the sections that are particularly important from a transaction readiness perspective: legal structure, cap table, fundraising objectives, and the realism of the figures.

A pitch deck is the accepted standard for business communication at the deal preparation stage. It allows founders to quickly and clearly present the business structure, key metrics, and fundraising goals, giving investors a way to assess the project’s potential, the scalability of its business model, and the soundness of its financial expectations.

A good pitch deck should include:

• ownership structure / cap table,
• jurisdictions and key legal aspects,
• basic financial indicators,
• customer base and business model,
• team and roles,
• fundraising history (if applicable),
• purpose of the current round—why you need a partner or capital.

A well-prepared pitch deck serves as the first point of contact with investors. It also helps founders themselves structure their vision of the business: who we are, where we are today, and where we want to go with the raised capital. For an investor, this document provides a quick way to assess the scale of the business, its momentum, and its growth potential.

Often, it is the pitch deck that becomes the material on which the investor bases the decision to proceed with the conversation or not. That is why it deserves careful attention — it should be concise but substantive, with clear logic and understandable numbers.

Legal section: do not oversimplify

Many founders tend to omit the legal section or reduce it to simply stating the company name and jurisdiction. But investors want to understand where the IP is located, which company holds key assets, whether there are any risks in the cap table (e.g., unconfirmed options or SAFEs), and which founders actually control the business.

Forecasts: realism over optimism

Investors do not expect everything in a startup to be perfect. But they do want to see that the team understands its own economics: where revenue and expenses come from, what margins are projected, and how the investment will be used. It is better to present moderate but well-substantiated growth than to promise "10x in a year" without a clear scaling model.

What not to include

A pitch deck is not the place for lengthy texts, filler content, or descriptions without numbers. There is no need for ten slides about the market unless they focus on what share you realistically plan to capture. Nor is it advisable to say "we will monetize later" — it is better to be upfront about where you are today, what has already been tested, and which hypotheses are still being validated. Transparency and specifics work better than general enthusiasm.

Authors: Viktoria Markova, Irina Kuheika

---

Dear journalists, the use of materials from the REVERA website in publications is possible only after our written permission.