This free eBook goes over the 10 slides every startup pitch deck has to include, based on what we learned from analyzing 500+ pitch decks, including those from Airbnb, Uber and Spotify.
Everything you need to raise funding for your startup, including 3,500+ investors, 7 tools, 18 templates and 3 learning resources.
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StudySoup effectively frames the problem by quantifying the immense time commitment students face, citing “180 hours of lectures and 305 hours of reading.” This approach immediately establishes the severity of the pain point, making the need for a solution feel urgent and obvious. By focusing on the universal student struggle for time and quality resources, they create a relatable narrative that resonates with anyone familiar with higher education.
Our Tip: Ground your problem statement in quantifiable data and relatable user experiences to make the pain point tangible for investors.
The pitch deck presents a clear, logical solution: a marketplace connecting students with materials from “elite notetakers.” This directly addresses the quality and reliability issues identified in the problem slide, demonstrating a strong problem-solution fit. The value proposition is simple and powerful, focusing on access to curated, high-quality content that helps students succeed.
Our Tip: Clearly demonstrate how your solution directly solves each pain point you introduced, emphasizing what makes your approach uniquely effective.
StudySoup outlines a classic and easily understood marketplace business model where the platform takes a cut from transactions. The explanation is clear: students pay for notes, and notetakers earn a commission, which creates a self-sustaining ecosystem. This clarity is crucial for investors, as it shows a direct path to revenue and a scalable mechanism for growth.
Our Tip: Present your revenue model with absolute clarity, explaining exactly who pays, what they pay for, and how the money flows through your system.
The traction slide is the deck's powerhouse, using hard numbers like 500,000 registered users and revenue that has doubled every quarter. These metrics provide undeniable validation that the platform has achieved product-market fit and is on a strong growth trajectory. Highlighting that top notetakers earn over $1,000 a month serves as powerful social proof, validating the model for the supply side of their marketplace.
Our Tip: Showcase a mix of user growth, revenue, and engagement metrics to build a comprehensive and compelling case for your product's market fit.
StudySoup anchors its entire pitch in concrete data, from the 305 hours of reading that define the problem to the 500,000 users that prove its solution works. This quantitative approach transforms abstract claims into tangible evidence of a real problem and a validated market fit. In your deck, use hard numbers to quantify the pain point and then circle back with traction metrics that prove you are effectively solving it.
The deck presents a simple, linear argument: students need better notes, and top students can provide them through a marketplace. This direct problem-solution fit, combined with a classic marketplace business model, removes ambiguity and makes the investment thesis easy to grasp. Structure your pitch around a simple, logical flow where each slide builds on the last, leaving investors with a clear understanding of your value and revenue model.
