How to Show your Pitch Deck's Value Proposition [A Guide]
- Ink Narrates | The Presentation Design Agency
- Oct 28, 2023
- 7 min read
Updated: Sep 24
Brian, one of our clients, asked us a sharp question while we were helping him build his pitch deck:
"How do I show my value without sounding like I'm trying too hard?"
Our Creative Director didn’t skip a beat:
"By making the investor say, ‘That makes sense’ before they even finish your slide."
We design a lot of pitch decks. For startups. For VCs. For internal teams chasing buy-in. And across all of them, there's one challenge we keep running into — the value proposition slide is usually either buried, bloated, or bland.
So in this blog, we’re going to talk about how to show your pitch deck’s value proposition so clearly that your audience gets it instantly — no over-explaining, no mental gymnastics. Just clear, compelling alignment.
Because if your audience doesn’t see value early on, the rest of your pitch won’t matter.
In case you didn't know, we specialize in only one thing: making presentations. We can help you by designing your slides and writing your content too.
Why Most Pitch Decks Get the Value Proposition Wrong
Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth — most pitch decks miss the mark not because the product is weak, but because the value isn’t obvious to the person reading the slides.
And it’s not their fault.
Your audience isn’t sitting there thinking, “How can I fall in love with this idea?” They’re thinking, “Is this worth my time, attention, or money?” And if your pitch doesn’t answer that quickly and clearly, they check out — even if the rest of your deck is brilliant.
We’ve seen this happen with early-stage founders, corporate teams, even Series B startups. The product slide? Polished. The business model? Charted out. But when it comes to the actual value, the slide is usually a bullet list of features, a half-baked mission statement, or vague promises that could apply to 10 other companies.
Here’s the thing: your pitch deck’s value proposition isn’t what you think is valuable. It’s what’s valuable to them — the people sitting across the table.
Investors want to know what problem you’re solving and why your solution is the one that actually matters. Not hypothetically. Not someday. Now.
And when your deck doesn’t hit that nerve, it becomes just another pretty PDF in someone’s inbox.
So, if you're wondering why your last pitch didn’t get the traction it deserved, you might not need more data, more charts, or more slides.
You probably just need to say something that actually lands.
How to Show Your Pitch Deck’s Value Proposition
Let’s cut to it. If you want your pitch deck’s value proposition to land, stop thinking like a founder and start thinking like the audience.
They don’t care about your tech stack. They don’t care about how passionate you are. They care about one thing: whether your idea makes sense to them right now. And showing that isn’t about adding more slides — it’s about getting ruthless with clarity.
We’ll walk you through what we’ve learned from building countless pitch decks — the ones that got funded, the ones that flopped, and the ones that surprised everyone in the room. Because showing your value isn’t a mystery. It’s a discipline.
Let’s break it down.
1. Start with the problem. A real one.
If your value proposition isn’t grounded in a real, felt problem, it doesn’t matter how slick your solution is.
The mistake we see? Founders jumping straight into their product without fully unpacking the problem. It’s like prescribing medicine before explaining the diagnosis.
Start your pitch deck with one clear problem that the audience can instantly relate to. Not a paragraph. Not a vague trend. A crisp, punchy articulation of what’s broken — and who’s frustrated by it.
For example, instead of saying:
“Companies struggle with operational efficiency in hybrid work environments.”
Say:
“Operations managers now spend 10+ hours a week juggling Slack, Asana, and spreadsheets just to track the same five projects.”
That’s real. That’s specific. That gets a nod.
If you want to show value, first show that you understand the pain.
2. Then, show what you’re solving better — not just differently
Once you’ve framed the problem, resist the urge to throw every feature and capability into your value proposition.
Your pitch deck shouldn’t read like a product manual.
What investors and stakeholders are looking for is your angle. Your leverage. The thing that makes your solution better in a way that actually matters to the person with the problem.
Let’s go back to that operations example. Suppose your product replaces three tools with one unified dashboard.
Now ask: so what?
Your answer isn’t “one tool instead of three.” That’s your feature. The value is something like:
“We reduce 8+ hours of admin work into a 15-minute daily workflow — saving teams one workday per week.”
Now that’s a value proposition. It connects your product to something they care about: time, money, energy.
The trap to avoid here is getting excited about how your product works. Your audience wants to know why it matters.
3. Make it visible. Make it scannable.
We’ve designed hundreds of pitch decks. You know what we never do?
Hide the value proposition in a dense paragraph.
Your slide needs to make your value pop — visually. This is where most founders trip up. They write their pitch like it’s an email.
We’re not reading. We’re scanning.
Use bold headers. Short subtext. Icons, visuals, and data points that guide the eye. Your value proposition slide shouldn’t take more than five seconds to grasp. Any longer and it’s too much thinking, and too much thinking means too little buy-in.
Here’s what works:
A short, bold headline that nails the benefit
One supporting line that explains the “how”
Visuals that reinforce the point (think: dashboards, screenshots, metrics)
Clean layout, no clutter, no side tangents
For example:
Headline: “Save 60% of time spent on project handoffs”
Support: “By consolidating task briefs, status updates, and team notes in one place "
Visual: A clean before-after workflow graphic
This kind of slide is easy to digest and impossible to ignore. It earns attention. And that’s half the game.
4. Anchor it in numbers (but only the ones that matter)
It’s tempting to throw in vanity metrics. We’ve seen slides say things like, “We’ve had 10,000 website visits” or “Our prototype got 100 likes on LinkedIn.” That’s not value — that’s noise.
Real value is measurable, but meaningful.
If you have early traction, tie it back to the problem you’re solving.
Here’s what that looks like:
“Teams using our tool reduced handover errors by 40% in the first month.”
“Churn rate dropped from 22% to 8% after onboarding with our solution.”
“Beta customers reported saving 6 hours/week on average.”
These are numbers that speak to outcomes. And outcomes are what investors listen for.
Don’t have numbers yet? Use clear assumptions:
“For every 100 customers, our model projects $80K in annual recurring savings.”
“Based on pilot testing, we cut onboarding time from 2 weeks to 3 days.”
The key is to show that your solution works in a way people value — and back it with something more solid than enthusiasm.
5. Address the “Why now” question
Even if your product is great and your value is clear, there’s one more unspoken question in the room:
Why hasn’t this been done already?
Or more politely: Why now?
If you’re solving an old problem with a new approach, spell out why now is the right time for this solution to exist. It could be due to:
New regulations creating demand
Emerging technologies enabling better delivery
Market behavior shifting (e.g., post-COVID habits)
Competitor gaps or industry fatigue
For instance:
“Remote work isn’t new. But the sudden shift to hybrid left thousands of operations teams with fragmented workflows. We’re fixing that gap.”
This context isn’t just helpful — it makes your value proposition feel timely, inevitable even.
And that’s a powerful position to be in.
6. Don’t try to be clever. Be clear.
You’re not writing a slogan. You’re trying to get a smart, skeptical audience to nod and think, “Yeah, that’s needed.”
So skip the metaphors. Don’t hide behind buzzwords. Avoid anything that sounds like a startup bingo card.
Bad example:
“We empower seamless, decentralized collaboration via intelligent automation.”
Better example:
“We let hybrid teams coordinate tasks without endless Slack threads.”
One of the best pitch decks we ever worked on had a single sentence in their value prop:
“We help freelancers get paid on time, without chasing clients.”
Simple. Clear. Focused on a pain people feel and a win people want.
That’s what sticks.
7. Show your value early — and repeat it
Most decks bury the value proposition after the problem, the market, the product, and a dozen slides later, finally try to explain the benefit.
That’s too late.
Your pitch deck’s value proposition should show up early. Preferably in the first 3-5 slides.
And once it’s introduced, reinforce it throughout:
Mention it in the solution slide
Highlight it in the traction slide
Tie it back in the business model
Echo it in the closing statement
This isn’t redundancy. It’s reinforcement. Your audience is busy, distracted, and probably looking at 20 other decks this week.
You want them to remember your core value — not just your logo.
8. Test it out loud
Here’s something we do with every pitch we design: we speak the slides out loud, exactly as the presenter would.
If your value proposition sounds clunky or confusing when spoken, it’s not ready.
Read it to a teammate. Read it to someone outside your industry. Ask them what they understood. If they can’t say what you do and why it matters in one line, go back and sharpen it.
We’ve rewritten entire decks based on how a single sentence landed in a test read. Because once you're in that pitch room (or Zoom), you don’t get time to explain twice.
When you test your pitch in conversation, you’re testing for clarity, confidence, and connection. And that’s where your real edge lies.
Why Hire Us to Build your Presentation?
If you're reading this, you're probably working on a presentation right now. You could do it all yourself. But the reality is - that’s not going to give you the high-impact presentation you need. It’s a lot of guesswork, a lot of trial and error. And at the end of the day, you’ll be left with a presentation that’s “good enough,” not one that gets results. On the other hand, we’ve spent years crafting thousands of presentations, mastering both storytelling and design. Let us handle this for you, so you can focus on what you do best.