The How to Make a Deck editors
The editors curate every module, teardown, and rubric against named primary sources: Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, First Round Capital, Gong.io, and DocSend.
How to Make a Deck is edited as a working reference, not a hot take. Every module is written against a specific primary source and every teardown is scored against the same rubric we ship publicly.
The editors have been on both sides of the table: pitching for capital and reading decks as advisors, angels, and operating partners. The house style is short sentences, dated citations, and named tradeoffs. If a claim isn't in the DocSend 2015 study, Sequoia's template, YC's library, First Round's Review, or Gong's call analytics, it doesn't get shipped.
Editorial policy: no anonymous claims, no re-labeled marketing content, no undated statistics. If something changes in the primary source, the module changes here and shows up in the changelog.
- ›Editorial rubric derived from Sequoia Capital's public pitch template and DocSend's 2015 study of 200 seed decks (~$360M raised)
- ›Teardown severity taxonomy modeled on First Round's investor feedback framework
- ›Sales-deck patterns anchored to Gong.io's analysis of millions of recorded B2B calls
- ›Every module cites its primary source; every citation carries a public URL and a date