How to Make a Series B Pitch Deck [A Detailed Guide]
- Ink Narrates | The Presentation Design Agency
- Nov 2, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 3
Edward, one of our clients, asked us a question while we were working on his Series B pitch deck:
"What’s the one thing investors want to see more than anything else at this stage?"
Our Creative Director replied without blinking,
"Clear proof that you're not just growing — you're scaling."
As a presentation design agency, we work on many Series B pitch decks throughout the year. In the process, we’ve observed one common challenge: Founders often confuse what worked in Series A with what’s expected in Series B.
This blog will walk you through how to think, plan, and design a Series B pitch deck that actually meets the expectations of this funding round.
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 a Series B Pitch Deck Is Slightly More Difficult Than the Others
Here’s the truth: Series B is the “prove it” round.
You’ve already got some traction. You’ve raised capital. You have a product. You have customers. Investors know that. What they don’t know — and what your pitch deck needs to prove — is that you’ve figured out how to take what’s working and multiply it without the whole system falling apart.
This is exactly why a Series B pitch deck is harder than your Seed or Series A. Those rounds are built on potential and possibility. A great story, a confident founding team, and some initial signs of product-market fit could get you in the room. But Series B? It’s less about the vision and more about the machine.
Investors at this stage are asking:
Can you scale efficiently?
Are your economics sustainable?
Is your team capable of building infrastructure that doesn't collapse under growth pressure?
Your pitch deck can’t just be exciting. It needs to be credible. And that credibility comes from numbers, systems, and evidence of repeatability — not just passion.
Another reason it's tricky? You’re now pitching to professionals who’ve seen hundreds of companies try to scale and fail. They’re not just investing in your upside. They're calculating your downside.
So while the deck still needs to tell a story, that story has to be anchored in cold, hard operational reality.
How to Make a Series B Pitch Deck That Works
We’ve seen it again and again. A founder walks in with a beautiful deck full of bold claims, hockey-stick graphs, and a passionate narrative — only to be met with polite nods and follow-up silence. Why? Because at Series B, it’s not about telling investors what they hope to hear. It’s about showing them what they need to believe.
If you're reading this, you're likely preparing to pitch institutional investors who are measuring every word you say against hard benchmarks. So let's cut the fluff and get into what your Series B pitch deck should actually contain — and how to get each part right.
1. Start With a Tight, Focused Narrative
Your story still matters, but now it needs to work in service of your traction, not the other way around. You're not introducing your startup to the world anymore — you're showing how your vision has translated into real-world growth.
What to do:
Start with one clear sentence that defines your business. No jargon. Just what you do and who you do it for.
Follow it with one compelling line that states your traction to date. Something like: “$6M ARR with 3X YoY growth and 80% customer retention.”
Now you’ve earned the right to unpack your story.
You’re telling a story about growth, operational maturity, and readiness for scale. Every slide should reinforce that narrative.
2. Show Your Traction, Not Just Talk About It
This is where many Series B decks fall flat. They say they're growing. They say customers love them. But there’s a gap between saying and showing.
What to do:
Include clear metrics: Revenue, active users, retention, CAC, LTV, gross margins. If you’re SaaS, don’t avoid churn rates.
Use charts over bullet points. Investors can read. What they want to see is visual proof of upward momentum.
Annotate your graphs. Don’t just show the line — explain what happened at each inflection point. Did churn drop after onboarding improvements? Did revenue spike after entering a new vertical? Highlight it.
Your traction slide(s) should do more talking than your team. And remember: if you’re vague here, you lose credibility fast.
3. Prove You Know How to Scale
This is the big one. Everyone can grow when the product is shiny and the market is early. But Series B investors want to know how you’ll continue growing when things get harder — when acquisition costs rise, when competitors show up, when internal complexity increases.
What to do:
Include a slide called “Our Growth Engine” or something equally blunt.
Show your main acquisition channels, conversion funnels, and retention loops.
Break down unit economics at scale. What worked at 100 customers may not work at 10,000.
Talk about your infrastructure readiness. Do you have the right people, systems, and processes to handle the next growth phase?
One of the best Series B decks we’ve worked on had a slide titled “What Broke at $5M ARR — and How We Fixed It.” It instantly showed maturity, learning, and the ability to adapt. That’s what Series B is about.
4. Market Size — But With Depth
By now, investors know your industry. What they want to see is how you’re approaching your market and why your path is uniquely scalable.
What to do:
Avoid vague TAM/SAM/SOM pie charts unless they’re rooted in real segmentation.
Instead, show how you’re currently positioned and what segments you’re targeting next.
Explain how your CAC and sales cycles will evolve as you move into adjacent markets.
Investors aren’t just betting on a market being big. They’re betting on you having the right wedge into that market. Focus on your go-to-market mechanics more than the overall pie size.
5. Team Slide — Beyond the Bios
You might’ve shown off your founding team in Series A. Now, investors want to know whether you’ve built a company, not just a team of builders.
What to do:
Show key hires post-Series A. Who came on board and why? What gaps did they fill?
Highlight functional leaders: Head of Product, VP of Sales, Ops, etc.
If you're hiring, show your org chart and where you’re investing next. This shows planning, not just execution.
One underappreciated slide? A short one showing how the founding team has evolved their own roles. That’s leadership maturity in action.
6. Product — Through the Lens of Scalability
This is where your demo used to be the star. But by Series B, your product has to prove its scalability. Feature tours won’t cut it.
What to do:
Show how your product supports scale. Think automation, integrations, modular architecture.
Talk about usage patterns across different customer sizes.
If you’ve verticalized your solution, show how and why.
Also, if you have a product roadmap, don’t just throw in a vague timeline. Use it to show how your next builds align with market demand or customer feedback loops. This is not a wish list. It’s a growth strategy.
7. Competitive Advantage — Not Just a Matrix
The old “us vs. competitors” matrix with lots of green checkmarks doesn’t work anymore. Every investor has seen it. Every founder says they’re better. It’s boring and often ignored.
What to do:
Frame your competition slide around defensibility. What’s keeping others from copying you?
Focus on moats: Data, network effects, operational complexity, customer lock-in.
Include real differentiators backed by data. Are your retention numbers higher? Are your margins better?
If your differentiation isn’t obvious, investors will assume it doesn’t exist.
8. Financials — Confidence in the Details
By Series B, your numbers aren’t “projections” anymore. They’re expectations. Investors want to see that you’ve built the financial discipline to manage aggressive growth.
What to do:
Show your past 12-18 months of financials and your next 24 months forecast.
Break out revenue streams if you have multiple. Also break out fixed vs variable costs.
Be upfront about cash burn and runway. Don’t hide it — explain how this next round changes your burn profile.
Include key metrics like CAC payback period, contribution margin, and LTV/CAC ratio.
Here’s what good decks do differently: they explain their assumptions. If you’re forecasting 2X growth in enterprise sales, tell the reader exactly what makes that realistic — like a new VP of Sales or a partnership already in motion.
9. The Ask — With Strategic Clarity
Don’t treat your funding ask like a footnote. It’s what you’re here for. And Series B investors want to know exactly what their money will do.
What to do:
State the amount you're raising and the equity range you expect to offer.
Break down how the capital will be allocated. Hiring, expansion, product, etc.
Link your spend to outcomes. Instead of “25% for marketing,” say “25% to double pipeline velocity in enterprise segment.”
When you’re specific, investors see you’ve thought it through. That’s the kind of founder they trust.
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.