# Startups — Pitch Deck

Canonical URL: https://shipslides.com/d/business-startups
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Category: Business
Slides: 20
Updated: 2026-05-17T20:52:18.678Z
Tags: business, startups

## Summary

From Paul Graham's garage to the unicorn parade — what venture capital actually looks for, why most fail, and the few patterns that recur. Key sections include: Startups.; What is a startup?; The accelerator model; Lean Startup; Product–Market Fit; The funding ladder; The unit economics that matter; The founding team; Airbnb · 2007–2011; Stripe · 2010–today.

## Slide Outline

1. Startups.
2. What is a startup?
3. The accelerator model
4. Lean Startup
5. Product–Market Fit
6. The funding ladder
7. The unit economics that matter
8. The founding team
9. Airbnb · 2007–2011
10. Stripe · 2010–today
11. Quibi · 2018–2020
12. The pitch deck
13. Why startups die
14. Term sheet, demystified
15. How startups end
16. The startup funnel
17. The seven sins of seed-stage founders
18. Where to learn more
19. The only thing that matters.
20. Thank you.

## Slide Transcript

### Slide 1: Startups.

- A Pitch Deck About Pitch Decks
- From Paul Graham's garage to the unicorn parade — what venture capital actually looks for, why most fail, and the few patterns that recur.
- Y CombinatorLeanPMFSeries AExits

### Slide 2: What is a startup?

- Definition
- "A startup is a company designed to grow fast." — Paul Graham, "Startup = Growth," 2012
- Not just new. A laundromat is new but doesn't scale. Three traits define it:
- Big market. Total addressable market in the billions, not the millions.
- Repeatable model. Each unit sold makes future units cheaper or easier.
- Speed before scale. Find the model first; pour fuel only when it works.

### Slide 3: The accelerator model

- Y Combinator
- Founded 2005 by Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Trevor Blackwell. Twice-yearly batch of ~250 startups in Mountain View / online. Investment: $500K for ~7% (current terms).
- Demo Day at the end. ~5,000 founders have come through. Aggregate value of YC alums exceeds $600B as of 2024.
- Notable alumni
- Airbnb (W09) · Stripe (S09) · Dropbox (S07) · Reddit (S05) · Coinbase (S12) · Instacart (S12) · DoorDash (S13) · Twitch (W07)
- YC Maxims
- Make something people want.
- Talk to users.
- Do things that don't scale.
- Launch ugly. Launch now.
- Default alive, not default dead.
- Default rate: ~5% weekly growth.

### Slide 4: Lean Startup

- Methodology
- Eric Ries (2011), based on Steve Blank's customer development. Replace business plans with hypotheses. Replace launches with experiments.
- Pivot = a structured course correction to test a new fundamental hypothesis. Slack pivoted from a multiplayer game (Glitch) to a chat tool. Twitter pivoted from podcasting (Odeo). Instagram pivoted from a check-in app called Burbn.

### Slide 5: Product–Market Fit

- The Holy Grail
- "You can always feel product/market fit when it's happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it." — Marc Andreessen
- Sean Ellis Test
- Survey users: "How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?" PMF benchmark: 40%+ "very disappointed."
- Retention curves
- The cohort retention curve must flatten above zero. Users keep coming back without paid prompting.
- Word of mouth
- Customers refer without being asked. The CAC drops. The sales cycle shortens. You can't make the product fast enough.

### Slide 6: The funding ladder

- Capital
- StageTypical SizeLeadDilutionWhat you sell
- Pre-seed$50k–$1MFriends, angels, YC5–10%A pitch deck and a working demo
- Seed$1–4MSeed funds (FF, Initialized)15–25%Early traction, $1M ARR target
- Series A$8–18MSequoia, A16z, Benchmark20–25%PMF, repeatable sales motion
- Series B$25–50MTier-1 funds, growth arms15–20%Scale, $5–15M ARR, expanding ICP
- Series C+$50–500M+Tiger, Coatue, SoftBank10–15%Market leadership, IPO proximity
- Pre-IPO$500M–$5BCrossover, sovereign wealth5–10%Brand, IPO bookbuild
- Rule of thumb: raise 18–24 months of runway. The next round always takes longer than you expect.

### Slide 7: The unit economics that matter

- Math
- CACCustomer Acquisition Cost. All sales+marketing ÷ new customers in the period.
- LTVLifetime Value. ARPU × gross margin ÷ churn rate. SaaS rule: LTV/CAC ≥ 3.
- PBPPayback Period. Months for gross profit to cover CAC. Healthy: < 12 months.
- NRRNet Revenue Retention. Top SaaS: 120%+. Existing customers grow faster than churn.
- SaaS Rule of 40: Growth Rate % + Operating Margin % ≥ 40. The market will value you on this above all else once you cross $50M ARR.

### Slide 8: The founding team

- Founders
- YC's data: solo founders fail more often than 2- or 3-person teams. 4+ team members raises coordination costs and reduces equity per founder.
- The classic split: hacker × hustler. One ships product. One ships sales, fundraising, hiring. Sometimes a third "designer/product" sits between.
- "Bad cofounders are a worse problem than not having a cofounder." — Paul Graham
- Equity vesting
- Standard: 4-year vest, 1-year cliff. After year 1, 25% vests; remainder monthly. Reverse-vesting protects everyone if a cofounder leaves in month 8.
- Founder breakups
- Noam Wasserman's data: 65% of high-potential startups fail because of founder conflict. Have the equity-split conversation early; revisit it.

### Slide 9: Airbnb · 2007–2011

- Case Study
- Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, broke roommates in San Francisco, rent out three air mattresses during a design conference. Charge $80/night. Three guests. The seed of an idea.
- Original site: AirBedAndBreakfast.com. They financed runway by selling election-themed cereal boxes ("Obama O's") at $40/box — made $30K.
- Rejected by VCs 7 times. Accepted to YC W09 with PG's note: "They're like cockroaches. They will not die."
- The unlock: photographers. NYC hosts had bad photos. The founders flew there with a camera, shot listings themselves. Bookings doubled. Lesson: do things that don't scale.
- By the numbers, today
- $11B revenue (2024) · 5M+ hosts · 1.5B+ guest arrivals all-time · IPO Dec 2020 at $47B valuation, popped to $100B day one.

### Slide 10: Stripe · 2010–today

- Case Study
- Patrick & John Collison, brothers from Limerick, Ireland. Built a way to accept payments online with seven lines of code at a time when the alternatives required signing a contract with a "merchant acquirer" and waiting weeks.
- Beachhead
- Developers. Hard to charm, but if you do — they evangelize. Stripe's docs are still considered industry-best.
- Expansion
- From payments to billing, identity (Atlas, Radar), corporate cards (Issuing), tax. The "atomic concept" expanded into a financial OS.
- Numbers
- $1.4T processed in 2024 · ~$70B valuation · still private · profitable.
- "We thought we were building a developer tool. Turns out we were building economic infrastructure." — Patrick Collison, 2021

### Slide 11: Quibi · 2018–2020

- Case Study
- Jeffrey Katzenberg + Meg Whitman. Raised $1.75B from Disney, NBC, Sony, Alibaba, JPMorgan. Premium short-form video, mobile-only, $5–8/month. Star talent. Original shows.
- Launched April 2020. Shut down October 2020. Six months.
- What went wrong
- Wrong moment. Mobile-only during a pandemic when everyone was home in front of a TV.
- No social loop. Couldn't share clips. People watch short-form to send to friends.
- Wrong target. Hollywood made shows for adults; phone-shape video lived on TikTok.
- Capital ≠ traction. No PMF, but launched at scale anyway. Lean Startup commandment broken.

### Slide 12: The pitch deck

- Frameworks
- Sequoia's classic 10-slide template (still 90% of seed pitches in 2026):
- #SlideTest
- 1Company purposeOne sentence. Could a stranger repeat it?
- 2ProblemPain customers feel today. Quantify if you can.
- 3SolutionYour product. Not features — the value.
- 4Why now?What changed in tech, regulation, behavior?
- 5Market sizeTAM / SAM / SOM. Bottoms-up beats top-down.
- 6CompetitionDon't say "no competitors." Say where you sit.
- 7ProductScreenshots. Demo if possible.
- 8Business modelHow you make money. Pricing. Unit econ.
- 9TeamWhy you. Why now. Domain credentials.
- 10Financials & askHow much, for what milestone, runway months.

### Slide 13: Why startups die

- Survival
- CB Insights' top reasons (post-mortem analysis of ~500 failed startups):
- Reason%
- Ran out of cash / failed to raise38%
- No market need35%
- Got outcompeted20%
- Flawed business model19%
- Regulatory / legal18%
- Pricing / cost issues15%
- Wrong team14%
- Bad product8%
- Default Alive vs. Default Dead
- PG's 2015 essay. Plot expense growth vs. revenue growth at current burn. Will you reach profitability before cash runs out?
- If yes — you can decide whether to raise. If no — your decision is forced. Most founders discover too late they're default dead.
- "Until you're default alive, you have no permission to think about anything else." — PG

### Slide 14: Term sheet, demystified

- Frameworks
- TermWhat it really means
- Pre-money valuationWhat the company is worth before this check lands
- Post-money valuationPre-money + new investment
- Liquidation preferenceInvestor gets their money out first on exit. 1x non-participating is standard.
- Pro-rata rightsRight to invest in future rounds to maintain ownership %
- Anti-dilutionDown-round protection. Broad-based weighted average is fairest.
- Board compositionWho controls the company. 2 founders / 2 investors / 1 indep is balanced.
- Option poolSet aside for future hires. Larger pool = more dilution to founders, not investors.
- SAFE / Convertible noteDefer valuation to next priced round. SAFE has no maturity date or interest.

### Slide 15: How startups end

- Exits
- Acqui-hire
- $1–25M. Talent acquisition. Common when product fails but team is strong.
- Strategic acquisition
- $50M–$5B. Instagram→Meta ($1B), GitHub→Microsoft ($7.5B), Slack→Salesforce ($27B).
- IPO
- The big one. Median age at IPO: 11 years. Only ~1% of VC-backed companies make it.
- Direct listing
- Spotify (2018), Slack (2019). No new shares issued; just existing ones become tradeable.
- SPAC merger
- 2020–21 fad. Faster than IPO but worse outcomes — most de-SPACs trade below issue.
- Failure
- ~75% of seed-stage VC-backed startups never return investor capital. The base rate.

### Slide 16: The startup funnel

- Diagram

### Slide 17: The seven sins of seed-stage founders

- Mistakes
- Premature scaling. Hiring sales before you know what you're selling. Building the team you'll have at $10M ARR while you're at $1M.
- Skipping user research. Believing your own pitch deck. Steve Blank: "No facts exist inside the building. Get out."
- Vanity metrics. Pageviews, downloads, signups. Track activation, retention, and revenue.
- Raising too much, too early. $10M seed at $40M post means your Series A needs to be a $200M valuation. Few companies make that jump.
- Co-founder splits without conversation. 50/50 sounds fair until someone's working twice as hard.
- Building features instead of solving problems. Customers want milkshakes, not blenders.
- Confusing fundraising with success. Money is fuel. Fuel without an engine is a fire.

### Slide 18: Where to learn more

- Reading list
- Books
- Zero to One — Peter Thiel
- The Lean Startup — Eric Ries
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz
- Founders at Work — Jessica Livingston
- The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick
- Hooked — Nir Eyal
- Crossing the Chasm — Geoffrey Moore
- YouTube
- Y Combinator — Startup School lectures, How to Start a Startup (Stanford CS183B)
- Stanford GSB — View From The Top, ETL series
- a16z — Andreessen Horowitz channel
- This Week in Startups — Jason Calacanis interviews founders
- Essays
- paulgraham.com/articles.html — start with "How to Start a Startup," "Do Things That Don't Scale," "Default Alive or Default Dead?"

### Slide 19: The only thing that matters.

- Last slide
- "Make something people want." — Y Combinator motto, since 2005
- Every framework, every term sheet, every essay reduces to that. The hard part is figuring out who the people are and what the something is. Everything else — the cap table, the demo day, the press, the IPO — is the byproduct.
- Press → for next slide, ← for previous.

### Slide 20: Thank you.

- Index
- Twenty slides on what makes startups grow, raise, exit, or die.
- ← Back to The Deck Catalog
- ← Business & Economics index


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