These 5 Slides Are Useless In Your Pitch Deck

Time wasted reading them is just not worth it.

Slide designed by author’s team – Albusi

Here’s what we’ll talk about:

• Some investor deck structures

• The 5 Slides

  • Marketing

  • Exit

  • GTM

  • Questions?

  • Technical Details

• (For Paid Subscribers) The proper investor presentation length for our fast-moving AI age.

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The world of pitch decks is full of advice. Ironically, this is one of them. So, let’s start by stating the obvious: Whatever deck works for you is usable regardless of the content. If that deck has one word saying, “Invest in me,” and it pulls it off, then use it!

But in most cases, you need to experiment with different pitch deck structures. There are a few that stand out:

1. Guy Kawasaki’s — This is actually quite decent. But the GTM slide is one of the slides that I recommend ditching. Yet, the length of 10 slides is to the point.

2. 500co’s — This is one of my favorites because it focuses on post-traction startups and narrates something worth reading.

3. Sequoia’s — Also decent and similar to Kawasaki’s. But I’d say it’s generic more or less.

Now, there are slides that, based on my 12 years of investment-prep experience, you should ditch in your deck.

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The 5 Useless Slides Of Our Age

Pitch decks are like playlists — you gotta keep only the bangers and skip the fillers. So, there are some slides that are basically the "skippable tracks" of the startup world:

Marketing

It’s one of those slides that nobody remembers after the pitch, not even the founders themselves.

Listen, dropping a slide full of buzzwords like "synergy" and "growth hacking" isn't going to impress anyone. It's like saying, "We plan to do marketing." Okay, cool, but doesn't everyone? Skip the jargon and show real action elsewhere.

Exit

This is extremely complex and mostly inaccurate. Unless you’re in your series-B round and you have a record of previous exits, don’t add this slide.

GTM (Go-To-Market)

This one's tricky. It's not that GTM isn't important—it's just that most GTM slides are so vague that they're useless. If you can't make it super specific and actionable, just weave that information into other slides where it makes sense.

Questions?

Ending your deck with a "Questions?" slide is a bit of a snooze. It's like, we know there'll be questions; it's a pitch. Instead, use that slide real estate for something that adds real value or sparks conversation on its own.

Technical Details

Unless your product's success hinges on some super complex tech that needs explaining (like, I don't know, time travel?), keep the deep tech talk for the follow-up. No one's going to fall in love with your code on sight. Unless you really have some patented tech to explain, ditch it.

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The proper investor presentation length for our fast-moving AI age.

Our attention span has become smaller than a gold fish due to technology. So, keeping it a short deck is no longer optional. I recommend a 5-slider, not more.

Here are my suggested slides and content: