Pre-seed pitch deck, answered.

Ten to twelve. Nobody reads slide 18 at pre-seed. You win or lose by slide three. Standard arc: title, problem, insight, product, why now, market, traction or signal, team, ask, appendix. Past twelve is appendix.

Three things take its place. A sharp insight nobody else seems to have. A wedge you can ship in ninety days. Proof you've talked to enough customers to know what they actually want. Pre-seed investors aren't underwriting numbers. They're underwriting whether you see something they don't.

Median time to a yes-or-no on a pre-seed deck is under two minutes. Aim for ninety seconds to read and one click to forward. If the deck only works when you're in the room presenting it, the cold inbox round is dead before it starts.

One slide. Three numbers. Eighteen-month burn, the milestone the round gets you to, and the metric that tells you you've hit it. The five-year revenue projection gets discounted to zero and makes everything else look naive. Skip it.

Most US pre-seed rounds are landing between $750k and $3M. For software, $1.5M is roughly the median. Size to eighteen months of runway plus the specific milestone you're underwriting (first $X ARR, beta launched, design partner signed). Don't size to the market.

A pre-seed deck argues you should exist. A seed deck argues you should keep existing. Pre-seed rests on insight and team. Seed has to defend retention, a GTM motion, and early numbers. The slide order is similar. The burden of proof isn't.

Less than founders think. They care about the wedge: a beachhead you can dominate in eighteen months, and whether that wedge expands. A $40B TAM slide with nothing on slide one is worthless. A $400M wedge with a credible expansion path raises the round.

Fifteen to twenty-two percent on a priced round is typical. SAFEs and notes stack quickly. If you're past twenty-five percent at pre-seed, your seed lead will flag it. Model the conversion at your projected seed cap before you sign anything.

Pitching the product instead of the bet. Six slides on features and one sentence on why the company should exist. Flip it. Lead with the insight, prove the wedge, then show the product as the way you deliver on the bet.

Before. Always. A pre-read filters out the partners who were going to pass anyway and turns the call into a conversation about the bet instead of a feature tour. A partner who won't read before they take the call isn't serious about the round.