A Scorecard to Rate Startup Pitch Decks

execution fundraising May 15, 2025

As an investor with Band of Angels, an advisor with the Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator, and a veteran judge of dozens of pitch events, I’ve seen hundreds of startup pitch decks. And as a startup operator and fractional founder, I’m often chartered with helping startups become fundable, revise their pitch, and raise funds.

Pitch decks must Captivate, Validate, and Motivate

To win an investor’s interest, pitch decks must captivate, validate, and motivate. Because investors review so many pitches, founders must captivate their audience with great writing, visuals, and delivery. Because investors face so many threats to investment success, the pitch must validate the startup’s risk mitigation efforts. And when the pitch deck tells a sweet, engaging story about a de-risked startup, the investor sees a fundable opportunity and is motivated to dig deeper.

Most pitch deck scorecards are incomplete

Back in 2020, I did a Google search for “startup pitch deck scorecard” and was quite disappointed with the results. Most scorecards were simplistic documents that just covered four to six seemingly random criteria. Instead of following a structured, rigorous review process, the haphazard criteria barely scratched the surface of how a demanding investor evaluates a pitch.

Simple math says these scorecards falls short. Most pitch decks consist of about 12 slides. If an investor provides feedback on just six criteria, that means about 50% of the deck doesn’t get adequate feedback coverage.

Our scorecard rates all three pitch goals

So, I created my own scorecard to address these shortcomings. As the years have passed, I made iterative refinements to improve my scorecard so it accurately reflects the thinking of investors.

The latest scorecard (version 7) rates three key goals of every pitch:

Captivate: The quality of the writing, visuals, and delivery.
Validate: The quality of the claims in the 15 most common pitch deck slides.
Motivate: The quality of the storytelling, de-risking, and overall fundability.

And for reference, the 15 most common pitch deck de-risking slides include:

Title
Situation
Problem
Solution
Business model
Market opportunity
Competition
Go-to-market and growth
Traction
Team
Financials
Ask / investment
Exit
Other (e.g., timeline, why now? and underlying magic)
Closing

Our training teaches pitch deck best practices

Another problem with most scorecards is they document a grading system for pitches but lack the training resources to teach founders how to succeed. Giving a student the final exam without any materials to learn the subject matter is a recipe for frustration. Our pitch deck scorecard aligns perfectly with our Pitch Deck Storytelling and Pitch Deck De-Risking classes.

Our Pitch Deck Storytelling class includes 200 slides that cover:

Why pitches fail and how to fix them
The investor pitch lifecycle
Salesmanship in fundraising
Storytelling: models and practicals (with multiple examples)
Effective written communication

Our Pitch Deck De-Risking class (coming soon) includes almost 400 slides that cover:

Reading vs. meeting decks
Messaging: clear, concise, comprehensive, catchy and compelling
Delivering great written and visual messages
Customizing a pitch deck template to tell your story
What to put in the top 20 slides, from title to closing

Free access to our pitch deck scorecard

Access to our pitch deck scorecard is included in our free Basic training package. Just sign up here and you’ll be well on your way to understanding the need to captivate, validate, and motivate investors. The scorecard tells you what to do, while the training classes tell you how to do it. Let us know how we can help you build and deliver great investor pitches!