The pitch deck, engineered.
How to Make a Deck is a free, interactive course for founders on the pitch deck investors actually read. Not the template you download once, the system you rewrite your deck against.
Why this exists
Most pitch advice online is a template. Templates tell you which slides to include; they don't tell you what those slides need to do, how long an investor will actually spend on each one, or how to tell a weak version from a strong one. How to Make a Deck starts from published investor-read data (DocSend 2015, Sequoia, YC, First Round) and turns it into modules, teardowns, and an audit you can score your deck against.
Who it's for
- Pre-seed and seed founders writing their first serious deck.
- Seed-to-Series-A founders rewriting the deck around a traction curve.
- Operators and PMs who want to know what a good deck actually looks like before helping a friend.
How How to Make a Deck is different
- Sourced. Every dwell second, weight, and heuristic traces to a published source. Where sources disagree we use the more conservative number.
- Comparative. Every module and every teardown pairs a weak version with a strong one on the same numbers, using the same running company (Nimbus Payroll) end to end.
- Interactive. The deck audit scores your slides in the browser and links each gap back to the module that fixes it.
- Free. No signup, no email wall, no upsell. Content only.
What How to Make a Deck is not
It doesn't read your slides, it isn't a pitch coach, and it can't replace showing your deck to three real investors. It's a structural checklist, informed by how investors actually read.