The winning fundraising deck template.

[Product category] for [specific customer] in [scope or geography]. [Stage] · raising [$X] · [Founder name, role] · [reply-to email].

• Category the reader already understands, in one word
• The wedge (customer, workflow, geography) that narrows it
• Stage, amount raising, founder name, reply-to email

Payroll for remote engineering teams in 40 countries. Seed · raising $2.5M · Jane Liu, CEO · jane@nimbus.co

• Mission-speak that could apply to any company
• A tagline with no category anchor
• No stage, no amount, no email

[Persona] doing [specific workflow] still takes [time] and [# of tools / $ cost / % drag]. We interviewed [N]. They spend [hours] and eat [$/%].

• One persona, one workflow, one artifact the reader can picture
• At least two numbers a reader could verify in a customer call
• Signal of primary research (interviews, ride-alongs, quotes)

Paying a contractor in Lagos still takes 11 days and 4 tools. A Series B startup with 40 engineers in 18 countries eats a 2.4% FX + fee drag on every international paycheck.

• 'The industry is broken' monologues with no persona
• Adjectives instead of numbers (painful, slow, complex)
• Three problems in a row, so none stand out

[Company] turns [old workflow] into [one concrete new action]. Before: [3 artifacts of the old way]. With [Company]: [3 outcomes the customer feels].

• Before / after on one page, same axis both sides
• Verbs describing what changes for the customer, not features
• One line that names the wedge product ('one button in Slack')

Nimbus turns payroll into one button in Slack. Before: US EOR + UK EOR + Wise + a spreadsheet, 11 days, 6 hours/month. With Nimbus: one vendor of record, paid in 2 hours, 20 min/month.

• Architecture diagrams and infrastructure logos at seed
• Feature lists ('supports X, integrates with Y, offers Z')
• Screenshots with no annotation of what the reader is meant to see

Three things that weren't true 18 months ago: 1) [regulatory or market shift, date] 2) [technology or rails shift, date] 3) [pricing or incumbent shift, date].

• Two or three shifts, every one dated to a month or year
• The shifts compose (regulation + rails + pricing, not all one axis)
• Something a reader could look up and check

1) 72 countries opened contractor-friendly digital tax IDs (2024–25). 2) Stablecoin corridors cut FX cost on USDC→NGN from 3.1% to 0.4% (Mar 2025). 3) Legacy EOR seat pricing hit $599/user, a 4× ceiling for a new entrant.

• 'AI is having a moment' or any sentence that fits any deck
• Undated trends ('the market is growing', 'buyers want X')
• One-axis stories (three regulatory bullets, no rails or pricing)

Bottom-up: [# of customers in the wedge] × [ACV] = [$SOM]. We hit [$ARR] at [X%] of SOM, the number [Series A / Series B] will judge us on.

• Bottom-up SOM the reader can rebuild in a spreadsheet
• TAM / SAM / SOM in that order, each tighter than the last
• SOM anchored to a specific ARR at a specific % capture

SOM: 18,000 remote-native software companies × $11.7K ACV = $210M. Nimbus hits $15M ARR at 7.1% of SOM, the number the Series A will judge us on.

• '1% of a $1.2T market' top-down slides
• Analyst-report screenshots with no wedge inside them
• SOM you can't tie to a plan the reader can price

[Metric that matters, in dollars] · [current level] · [# customers] · [MoM growth] · [retention / NRR].

• One chart, one metric, dollars on the y-axis
• MoM growth and retention in a line under the chart
• A single sentence you could defend cold, per month shown

ARR: $196K · 34 customers · 22% net new MoM · 118% NRR at 6mo cohort. 8 months since launch.

• Signup, waitlist, or vanity charts as the hero metric
• Two axes on one chart to hide the smaller number
• Cohort or retention claims you cannot walk through by month

[Name], [role]. [The one sentence about what they shipped that maps to this exact problem].

• One sentence per founder that maps to the wedge, not to LinkedIn
• The functional lead the category demands (regulated → compliance)
• The reason this specific team, not any two ex-FAANG engineers

Jane Liu, CEO. Built Rippling's international contractor product from 0 → $40M ARR. Ran it for 40 countries.

• A row of FAANG logos with no earned insight underneath
• '20 years of combined experience' with no shipped artifact
• Advisors on the team slide (move them to appendix)

Raising [$X] for [N] months to reach [next-round metric]. Use: [%] engineering, [%] GTM, [%] compliance / other.

• Amount and runway on the same line
• Use of funds that ties each bucket back to a slide the reader saw
• The metric the next round will price off, named explicitly

Raising $2.5M seed for 18 months to reach $1.8M ARR, 150 customers, 8% MoM. Use: 55% eng (4 hires), 25% compliance (12 new countries), 20% GTM (founder-led + 1 AE).

• Amount without a runway, or runway without a milestone
• Use-of-funds pie chart labeled 'operations / growth / other'
• A valuation on the deck itself (goes in the data room, not the pitch)