Some good news first:
Deck Studio is in TechCrunch Disrupt’s official Startup Battlefield Perks List for 2026 🎉
Last year, I had the chance to work with TechCrunch-selected founders, and some of the decks I created ended up on the Startup Battlefield stage.
This year, we’re doing it again.
I’ve already reviewed a few decks from this year’s selected startups ahead of Disrupt, and it reminded me how different a stage pitch is from a normal investor pitch.
At a demo day, startup competition or conference, you usually have only a few minutes.
Your audience has probably already watched several companies before you, and they’ll watch several more after you.
So your job isn’t to explain everything about your company.
Your job is to make the important parts easy to understand and difficult to forget.
Here are seven things I’d recommend before your next stage pitch.
1. Start with one key message
Before you write the pitch or build the deck, decide what you want people to remember about your company.
Just one thing.
Your audience is going to hear a lot of information during the event. Companies, numbers, products, markets, customer stories and ambitious visions.
Most of it will disappear quickly.
If you want your pitch to stick, build everything around one clear message.
Open your pitch with it.
Support it throughout the presentation.
Come back to it at the end.
You can support that message from different angles:
- Your traction
- Your solution
- Customer results
- Market trends
- Your technology
- Your business model
These shouldn’t feel like separate pieces of information.
They should all help prove the same argument.
A good stage pitch isn’t about communicating everything you know about your business.
It’s about making one idea memorable.
2. Keep your pitch deck short
You usually have limited time on stage.
That doesn’t mean you need a new slide every few seconds.
Constantly changing slides can make a presentation harder to follow. Your audience is trying to listen to you while also understanding what appears on the screen.
Give them less to process.
A five-minute pitch doesn’t necessarily need 20 slides.
Use as many slides as the story needs, and no more.
Sometimes one slide can stay on screen while you explain several points.
That’s completely fine.
The deck should follow the rhythm of your pitch, not force you to race through it.
3. Keep one message on each slide
Your stage deck is there to support you.
It shouldn’t become another speaker.
If you say something important, use the slide to reinforce the most important part of what you’re saying.
That might be:
$2.4M ARR
A customer logo.
A product screenshot.
A simple chart.
A single sentence.
A strong market number.
You don’t need to put your entire explanation on the slide because you’re already giving the explanation.
Think of each slide as a way to tell the audience:
This is the part I want you to notice.
If a slide is trying to communicate five things at once, people have to decide where to look.
Make that decision for them.
4. Keep the design simple
Your audience didn’t come to the event to read slides.
They came to listen to people.
On stage, you are the main communication channel.
The slides are secondary.
That means your presentation design should reduce friction instead of creating more things for the audience to process.
Use:
- Large text
- Clear numbers
- Simple charts
- Strong product visuals
- Plenty of empty space
- Clear visual hierarchy
You probably don’t need complicated diagrams, decorative icons, long paragraphs or elaborate transitions.
When I’m working on a stage deck, I constantly ask one question:
Does this help the audience understand what the speaker is saying?
If the answer is no, I usually remove it.
5. Be careful with AI-generated pitch decks
AI can be extremely useful when building a presentation.
It can help you structure your thoughts, generate ideas and create slides much faster.
And it can produce a perfectly fine-looking deck.
But “fine-looking” isn’t always enough for a stage presentation.
AI still makes visual decisions that don’t always match how people actually consume slides.
Some of the most common problems I see in AI-generated decks are:
- Too many containers and boxes
- Too much small text
- Icons everywhere
- Unnecessary visual elements
- The wrong information being highlighted
- Weak visual hierarchy
- Slides that look polished but take too long to understand
That becomes an even bigger problem on stage.
Someone might see your slide for only 20 seconds.
They need to understand it almost immediately.
If you use AI to create your deck, question every design decision it makes.
Does this box need to exist?
Can I remove this sentence?
Is the most important information also the most visually obvious?
Is anything competing with the point I’m making?
Keep removing things until the slide feels obvious.
And if you’re choosing between a simple slide and a fancy slide, simple is usually safer.
You don’t need impressive design tricks to give an impressive pitch.
6. Write your speech, but don’t memorize every word
I recommend writing your speech before the event.
Not because you need to read it word for word.
Writing forces you to decide what you actually want to say.
It also helps you connect your speech to the deck.
When you say one thing, a specific slide appears.
Then a sentence naturally takes you into the next slide.
That connection makes the whole presentation easier to follow, both for you and for the audience.
But trying to memorize every single word can create another problem.
If you forget one sentence, you suddenly start thinking about the script instead of the audience.
So know your story.
Know your important lines.
Know the transitions.
Know what each slide means.
Then give yourself enough freedom to speak naturally.
7. Practice for the version of you that will be on stage
You practice your pitch at home.
It takes 5 minutes and 45 seconds.
Perfect.
Then you walk onto the stage and finish it in 4 minutes and 30 seconds.
That happens all the time.
You’re excited.
There are lights.
There’s a timer.
People are watching.
Your adrenaline increases and you naturally start speaking faster.
Trying to control every word and constantly reminding yourself to “slow down” can make things worse. Now part of your attention is on your speaking speed instead of the pitch.
Preparation helps much more.
Practice with the actual deck.
Practice with a timer.
Practice out loud.
Practice your transitions.
Practice enough that the flow becomes familiar.
Then, when you get on stage, trust the preparation.
You’re there to show people the product and vision you’ve spent months or years building.
Enjoy that moment.
The audience can feel that energy too.
Your deck should make the pitch easier to follow
A stage pitch deck doesn’t need to explain your entire company.
It has a much simpler job.
Help people follow your story.
Show them what matters.
Make your strongest points easier to understand.
And give them one clear thing to remember when you leave the stage.
If you’re presenting at a demo day, startup competition, conference or investor event soon, start there.
