Techstars Pitch Deck Template [Let's Explore in Detail]
- Ink Narrates | The Presentation Design Agency
- Sep 19
- 8 min read
When our client Andrew was preparing his pitch deck to pitch to Techstars, he asked us a simple yet loaded question:
“Are there any guidelines we need to follow to get this right?”
Our Creative Director answered in one clean sentence:
“Yes, Techstars looks for clarity, not theatrics.”
As a presentation design agency, we work on many Techstars pitch decks throughout the year, and in the process, we’ve observed one common challenge: founders often confuse storytelling with decoration.
So, in this blog we’ll talk about how a Techstars pitch deck really works, what goes into it, and how you can make one that gets the right kind of attention.
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.
What Techstars Says About Pitch Decks
Techstars has put together a lean pitch deck template with prompts for each slide. It’s meant to be a starting point — not the final product. The template is deliberately sparse because the real impact comes from how you design and tell your story. As Techstars themselves say, design matters. Even if you’re not a designer, find the right tools or people to help.
Here’s what Techstars recommends for each slide:
Problem
Focus on the exact pain point you are solving. What is the specific, urgent problem that nobody else is addressing well today? The biggest mistake founders make is turning this slide into a broad industry overview instead of pinpointing the pain customers actually feel. Use data, stats, or metrics wherever possible to make the problem undeniable.
Team
Skip the generic advisor slides unless those people are genuinely involved. Instead, show why you and your team are the ones to build this company.
Highlight founder–market fit. What gives you the right to solve this problem? What’s the personal connection? Let your personality and unique perspective come through.
Solution / Demo
This is where you show, not tell. Use visuals, screenshots, or even a short demo video. Make it clear what your product actually looks like and how it works.
Traction / Milestones
Avoid vanity metrics. Stick to KPIs that matter. Show historical growth, revenue, users, or whatever signals momentum. If you can run a cohort analysis, include it — it makes traction look more credible and actionable.
Projections
Keep projections simple and high-level. Include 3–5 years of annualized revenue forecasts, and if you have real numbers, add them.
Do not paste raw Excel spreadsheets into your deck — they’re unreadable and unhelpful. Instead, use clean charts. And always make sure the numbers in your deck match the detailed financials you’ll share separately.
Business Model
Explain clearly how you make money. Is it SaaS, hardware, consulting, a marketplace? Keep it straightforward and specific.
Market Opportunity
Show how big the opportunity is using TAM, SAM, and SOM. But don’t inflate with irrelevant numbers like “$3 trillion is spent on food every year.” Your TAM must connect directly to your product and vision.
Also avoid the lazy “if we just get 1% of the market” approach. It signals a lack of depth.
Differentiation
Skip the overused 2x2 matrix where your logo sits in the top-right corner. Instead, explain in concrete terms what makes you different and why your solution can’t easily be copied. What is your moat?
Marketing / Sales Plan
Describe your go-to-market strategy at a high level. Is it network effects, land-and-expand, direct sales, partnerships? What’s unique about your plan? Show how you’ll acquire customers and scale in a way that gives you leverage.
The Ask
Be direct about how much you’re raising and what you’ll use it for. Always use a dollar figure. Avoid labelling it as “Series A” or “Seed” because those terms mean different things to different investors.
Do not bring up valuation unless you already have a term sheet. Talking about it too early often does more harm than good.
Vision
If you’re raising venture capital, your vision needs to be bold. Show where the company is headed and how it changes the world at scale. Investors want to see a story that extends beyond today’s product into a much larger future.
They’ve also shared a simple Google Slides template that follows these same guidelines, which you can check out here: Techstars Pitch Deck Template.
How to Build Your Own Deck Following the Techstars Pitch Deck Template
Techstars has already done the heavy lifting by publishing what they expect to see in a pitch deck.
But the truth is, copying their slides line by line won’t help you stand out. You need to adapt their framework to your story, your numbers, and your personality. So let’s break down how to actually build your own Techstars pitch deck, slide by slide, and make it resonate.
1. Problem: Make Them Feel the Pain
This slide isn’t about explaining an industry. It’s about making the pain real. Investors should read your problem slide and think, “That’s obvious, why hasn’t anyone fixed this already?”
How do you do that? You keep it sharp. One sentence. One story. One stat.
Bad example: “The healthcare industry is worth $4 trillion and full of inefficiencies.”Good example: “40% of cancer patients miss critical follow-ups because hospitals don’t track their schedules properly.”
See the difference? The first is abstract. The second is human. You don’t want to sound like a Wikipedia page. You want to sound like a founder who’s frustrated enough to build something better.
2. Solution: Stop Telling, Start Showing
Investors don’t want to read a poetic essay about how brilliant your solution is. They want to see it. If you have a product, show screenshots. If you have a demo, include a short video link. If you’re pre-product, use mockups, diagrams, or even sketches — but make it visual.
Here’s the trick: don’t show everything. Show the “aha” moment. What’s the one feature, workflow, or result that makes someone say, “Okay, that changes the game”?
And keep in mind: your solution slide is only as good as your problem slide. If the problem wasn’t urgent, your solution won’t matter.
3. Traction: Prove You’re Not Guessing
Nothing gets an investor’s attention faster than proof. Users. Revenue. Growth. Partnerships. Anything that shows people want what you’re building.
But traction is not vanity metrics. Saying “we had 1 million impressions on LinkedIn” is useless.
Saying “we’ve grown paying customers 25% month over month for the last six months” is gold.
If you’re early and traction is light, don’t panic. Show momentum in whatever way you can. Pilot results. Early customer testimonials. Even a strong waitlist can work if it’s real. The point is to prove this isn’t just a dream on a napkin.
4. Business Model: Show the Money Flows
This is where most founders start hand-waving. “We’ll figure it out later.” That doesn’t work here. Techstars wants to see how the business makes money today or will make money soon.
Keep it simple. Subscription? Commission? Marketplace fee? Hardware sales? Lay it out clearly and tie it back to your traction if you can.
And if you’re pre-revenue, don’t make up fairy tales. Just explain the plan: “We’ll launch as a SaaS with tiered pricing starting at $99 per month. Early conversations suggest strong willingness to pay.” It’s about showing you’ve thought about it.
5. Market Opportunity: Get Real About Size
Here’s where founders love to exaggerate. They throw in trillion-dollar market numbers hoping to wow investors. Instead, they lose credibility.
Your TAM, SAM, and SOM should connect directly to your product. If you’re building a platform for indie game developers, don’t quote the entire global gaming industry. Narrow it down to the slice you’re actually targeting.
Pro tip: focus more on the trend than the raw size. A $5 billion market growing 30% a year is more exciting than a $200 billion market that’s stagnant. Show why now is the moment.
6. Differentiation: Don’t Hide Behind Quadrants
We’ve all seen the cliché 2x2 matrix where somehow your startup magically sits in the top right corner. Investors roll their eyes when they see it.
Instead, tell them straight: what makes you different, and why can’t others copy you easily? Is it a proprietary algorithm? Exclusive partnerships? A network effect that gets stronger with scale? This is your moat slide. Without it, you look like another startup that’s easy to squash.
7. Marketing and Sales Plan: Show How You’ll Grow
This slide is about execution. How will you get customers, and how will you keep them?
Don’t just say “digital marketing” — that’s vague. Talk about specific channels, strategies, or hooks. Maybe it’s referral loops, enterprise partnerships, or a land-and-expand strategy inside Fortune 500s. Show how growth will actually happen, not just that you “intend to scale.”
Remember: investors don’t just invest in ideas. They invest in repeatable processes that can grow.
8. Projections: Believable, Not Beautiful
Everyone knows projections are guesses. The trick is to make them believable guesses.
Don’t paste spreadsheets. Use clean charts showing 3–5 years of revenue growth. Keep it “up and to the right” but with assumptions that make sense. For example, if you claim you’ll hit $100 million in three years, you better have a rock-solid argument for how you’ll get there.
The real value of this slide is not the numbers. It’s showing investors that you understand unit economics, costs, and growth levers. If you can explain your assumptions calmly and logically, you’ll earn trust.
9. Team: Put Faces to the Story
At the end of the day, investors back people, not slides. The team slide is your chance to make them believe you’re the ones to pull this off.
Keep it tight: founder names, photos, key roles, and one-liner credentials that prove relevance. “Ex-Google PM who scaled a product to 50 million users” is better than a full résumé.
And don’t forget founder–market fit. If you have a personal story that connects you to the problem, share it. Investors love knowing you’re not just chasing money but solving something that matters to you.
10. The Ask: Be Specific
This is where many founders fumble. They’re vague. They’re shy. They say things like, “We’re raising a seed round.” That’s not enough.
Say exactly how much you’re raising and what you’ll use it for. “We’re raising $2 million to expand our sales team, accelerate product development, and scale marketing.” That’s clear.
And here’s the golden rule: don’t pitch your valuation unless you already have a term sheet. Otherwise, you risk anchoring too high or too low.
11. Vision: End with the Dream
Finally, zoom out. If everything goes right, what’s the big picture? Investors want to know you’re not just building a tool — you’re building a movement, a platform, or an industry shift.
This is where you inspire. What does the world look like if you succeed? What do people do differently? Why does it matter?
But keep it grounded. A vision should be bold, not delusional. “We’re going to replace Google” is delusional. “We’re redefining how small businesses handle cash flow” is bold but believable.
Our Hard-Earned Advice from Building Decks
Since we’ve built decks for startups pitching Techstars and other accelerators, let us share a few hard-earned lessons:
Design is not decoration.
A clean, professional design makes your story easier to follow and signals you take this seriously.
Numbers should tell a story.
Don’t just drop charts. Show trends, show proof, show growth.
Every slide should answer “so what?”
If a slide doesn’t push your story forward, delete it.
Practice matters more than polish.
Even the best-designed deck fails if the founder stumbles in delivery. Rehearse until the story flows naturally.
Building your Techstars pitch deck isn’t about ticking boxes. It’s about crafting a story that’s clear, compelling, and credible. Follow the framework, but make it yours.
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.