This AI will tell you if your pitch deck is good enough
Trained on thousands of pitch decks, this specialized tool will tell you what’s working — and what isn’t — about your startup pitch deck. Yes, for free.
A few months ago, I wrote one of my TechCrunch Pitch Deck Teardown feature articles for TechCrunch+, taking a closer look at BusRight’s deck. . Today, I put the same deck through my AI powered deck review tool. The similarities between the two reviews are pretty astonishing. Makes sense, perhaps, given that I’ve trained this AI on the two books and hundreds of articles I’ve written about pitching over the years. Still, I wanted to give you sneaky look at the kind of feedback the AI gives.
If you want to try it out yourself, you can submit your deck for a free, AI-powered pitch deck review here.
The full report is 32 pages long, and you can read the full report here.
Here are a few of the things that surprised and delighted me:
Executive summary
The executive summary caught the vast majority of issues in the slide deck, and estimates that there is a high chance of BusRight raising funding. That makes sense, they did raise a $7 million round.
Team slide
BusRight’s team slide has an interesting quirk on it:
Basically, the company’s CEO used to be an investor at MassMutual ventures, but from this slide, he doesn’t have startup, municipal services, or logistics/transportation experience.
The AI’s feedback is dead on the money:
VCs will want to understand why this is the right team to run this company, but that isn’t clear from this slide deck. It seems like the CEO has limited experience in this space, but the traction slide makes up for it.
How cool is that?!
No ask included
Curiously, the BusRight deck doesn’t mention how much the company is raising. The AI called them out on that, saying “It’s important to have a specific amount raised to set the tone for the fundraising conversation. (…) Keep the ask focused on the amount needed to achieve the next milestone and leave the negotiation of terms for later discussions.”
No clear use of funds
When you’re raising funding, showing off what you’re going to do with the money is crucial. The AI (correctly) didn’t find a clear ‘use of funds’ slide in the deck, and explains what it was expecting to find:
Specifically, this was impressive and solid feedback:
“It’s important to clearly explain what BusRight plans to do with the funds it is raising. This slide is missing that crucial information, which is a red flag for VC investors. They want to see a detailed, milestones-driven plan for how the funds will be utilized once the fundraising is complete. (…) To address this, consider adding a slide that outlines how the funds will be allocated and what specific milestones you plan to achieve with the investment.”
Missing competitor analysis
The AI was looking for competitor analysis, failed to find it, and set out to explain why that’s a bad move. Re-reading my own Pitch Deck Teardown of BusRight, I see that I noted there was missing information from the deck, and I specifically listed the Ask, Use of Funds, and — yes- the competition.
The AI, to my surprise, both caught that the information was missing, and how to resolve it:
Specifically:
“It’s important to include this slide as it helps investors understand the landscape in which your startup operates. (…) If you don’t have direct competitors, it’s still important to address how people are currently solving the problem you’re tackling. This can include alternative solutions or workarounds that customers are currently using.”
Want to try it out?
The full report of BusRight’s deck can be seen here — then you can see both the constructive criticism and the praise the AI ladled onto the things that were working about the deck.
The AI pitch deck review tool is available for free, check it out.
