Pitch decks these days are slick and beautifully designed. Yet some of the most illustrious companies of Silicon Valley had pretty janky early stage pitch decks. What they didn’t have in style, they made up in substance.
In the past two decades as technology start-ups took center stage in the American economy, those companies’ pitch decks have encapsulated the zeitgeist of that era. Those pitch decks are in and of itself a lore of those companies’ history. Here we take a walk down memory lane with some of the most iconic companies’ early stage pitch decks.
Founded 2007
This pitch deck is for Dropbox's seed round which landed them $1.2M. Of all the seed rounds, Dropbox's at the time seems much larger than the like such as Uber, Airbnb, and even Facebook.
Founded 2012
This pitch deck is for Tinder's original incubator presentation in 2012. Amount raised unknown. Despite being a successful company now, this deck leaves much to desire. However, the punchy narrative does make it stand out from a messaging and positioning standpoint.
Founded 2009
This pitch deck helped Uber raise a modest $200K seed round. It's surprising given how modest the raise amount was, this seed stage deck is often used to demonstrate how to pitch a marketplace and a disruptive approach to an existing market.
Founded 2007
This pitch deck helped Airbnb raise a$600K seed round.
Founded 2004
Unlike the other decks here, this is SEOMoz's Series B deck from 2012. Needless to say, it is a much more developed deck. SEOMoz even has a blog post on its Venture Process that's worth the read.
Founded 2003
This is LinkedIn's Series B deck from 2004 that helped them raise $50M, which is a large round at the time. Reid Hoffman's blog actually has a complete rundown of his own deck, that's worth a read.
Founded 2012
This is Brian Armstrong's YC pitch deck. Of all the companies, Brian's pitch deck closely follows YC's seed deck template without extra fluff and frills. By the time Coinbase was founded, the tech scene was fully fledged, so their pitck deck is the most typical of a seed stage pitch deck.
Founded 2005
After only a year of being founded, YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65B. Naturally, this is their only deck.
Founded 2004
This was Facebook's pitch deck that helped them raise a $500K seed / angel round from legendary investor Peter Thiel.
The pitch deck is a medium that start-ups use to convey their hopes, dreams, and ambitions for their company. This collection of pitch decks show that what matters at the initial seed stage is the market opportunity, the team’s vision to tap into the opportunity, and the team itself. The story and the strength of the founding team plays a key role in making a pitch successful. Bells and whistles are not necessary for success funding.
We do not own any of these pitch decks but have relied other the aggregation and research efforts from various site included: Alexander Jarvis' website, Visme's Best Pitch Decks, and Slide Bean's pitch decks.
Most of the decks were uploaded onto Slideshare. Links are provided to the original post.
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