When pitching to investors, your financials slide is one of the most scrutinized sections of your entire pitch deck. It doesn't just show the numbers—it reflects your credibility, foresight, and business acumen. A poorly constructed financials slide can raise red flags, while a clear and realistic one can instill confidence and move you closer to funding.
Many founders struggle with this slide, either overwhelming investors with complex data or providing projections that seem overly optimistic or lack sufficient justification. If you want to ensure your financials slide supports your narrative and appeals to potential backers, here’s how to make it truly investor-friendly.
1. Understand What Investors Want to See
Before you build the financials slide, it’s critical to understand its purpose. Investors aren’t looking for just big numbers—they’re looking for a story told through numbers. They want to know:
What your business model looks like in practice
How you plan to grow and scale
Whether your projections are grounded in reality
When they can expect a return on their investment
A good financials slide gives investors confidence that you understand your market, your costs, and your path to profitability.
2. Include the Right Metrics
The financials slide should include the most relevant financial indicators for your business stage and model. For early-stage startups, these usually include:
Revenue projections (monthly or annually, for 3-5 years)
Gross margin
Net profit/loss
Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Customer lifetime value (LTV)
Burn rate and runway
EBITDA (if applicable)
Avoid including too much detail, especially on one slide. If necessary, break it into two slides (for example, historical performance and future projections) or be prepared with a more detailed appendix or data room.
3. Use Realistic and Defensible Projections
Perhaps the fastest way to lose an investor’s trust is by presenting overly optimistic numbers without any basis. If you claim you’ll go from $0 to $100 million in three years without showing how, you’re going to be met with skepticism.
Use bottom-up forecasting rather than top-down. Instead of saying “We’ll capture 1% of a $10 billion market,” show how you’ll acquire 1,000 customers each paying $500 per year through specific channels. This approach is more credible because it ties growth to realistic sales and marketing strategies.
Be conservative in your assumptions and be prepared to explain them. If your CAC is low, explain your efficient marketing strategy. If your margins are high, justify it with your cost structure or pricing model.
4. Keep the Design Clean and Simple
A cluttered slide full of spreadsheets is a turn-off. Investors should be able to glance at your slide and understand the key figures within seconds. Use charts or graphs to represent data visually—bar graphs for revenue growth, line graphs for burn rate, pie charts for cost breakdowns.
Limit the text. Each chart or section should be clearly labeled, and color coding should be consistent and intuitive. If you're unsure how to strike the right balance between detail and design, professional pitch deck design services can be helpful in translating complex data into visually engaging content.
Use white space strategically and resist the urge to shrink the font to cram more information in. One well-presented chart is more powerful than ten rows of unreadable figures.
5. Show the Timeline Clearly
Your financials should cover at least the next three years. For more mature startups or for investors expecting a longer-term horizon, five years is often preferred. Break the projections down annually for simplicity unless you're in a fast-moving space where quarterly projections make more sense.
Also, align the financial timeline with your funding timeline. If you're raising money now, show how long that funding will last (your runway) and when you anticipate needing another round. This shows you're planning ahead and understand capital efficiency.
6. Contextualize the Numbers
Numbers without context can be meaningless or misleading. Don’t just present projections—explain them. Use footnotes or a brief description to clarify what drives your growth or what assumptions you made.
For example, if you’re projecting $1 million in revenue in year one, say that’s based on onboarding 2,000 users with a $500 average spend. If your margins improve over time, explain why—perhaps due to economies of scale or improved supplier terms.
You don’t need to write an essay, but a few guiding points go a long way in showing investors that your numbers are thoughtful, not wishful.
7. Highlight Key Insights
Don’t just list numbers—highlight what’s important. Investors are often juggling multiple decks and will appreciate it if you surface key takeaways.
You can use callout boxes or headers to point out:
The month or year you become profitable
The moment your CAC drops below LTV
When revenue growth accelerates due to a new product launch
These insights help investors grasp your momentum and potential at a glance.
8. Prepare for Deeper Questions
While your deck needs to be concise, you should have more detailed financial models ready to go. Investors will likely want to dive deeper into your unit economics, customer segmentation, hiring plan, or fundraising strategy. Be ready with an Excel file or an investor data room.
During the pitch, you can reference your assumptions or invite follow-up questions. Demonstrating that you’ve stress-tested your model (for example, how you’d adapt if costs increase or conversion rates drop) positions you as a thoughtful and prepared founder.
9. Don’t Obscure the Bad News
Startups aren’t perfect, and investors know that. If your burn rate is high or you’re not breaking even for a while, don’t try to hide it—explain it. Investors are more likely to trust founders who are transparent and have a plan than those who gloss over challenges.
Use the financials slide to show how you’re managing risk. Maybe you’ve structured your hiring plan to delay heavy costs until after a milestone. Maybe you have a lean approach to scaling operations. These are things investors will respect.
10. Align with the Rest of the Pitch
Your financials slide should reinforce your overall story. If your earlier slides promised aggressive expansion and market capture, your numbers should support that. If you focused on a lean, bootstrapped approach, your financials should reflect frugality.
Inconsistencies between your narrative and your projections can be jarring and undermine your credibility. This is where founders often benefit from third-party pitch deck design services, which help ensure coherence in both storytelling and visual presentation.
11. Use Benchmarks and Industry Comparisons
If you're in a common vertical like SaaS, marketplaces, or direct-to-consumer, there are often standard benchmarks for CAC, LTV, margins, and growth rates. Referencing these benchmarks can help validate your numbers.
For example, if your CAC is half the industry average, explain why. Maybe you have a unique distribution partnership or an unusually viral product. If your margins are low, frame that within the context of early-stage investment or infrastructure costs that will decrease over time.
Investors often compare your projections with similar companies they’ve seen, so it helps to preempt that by providing your own comparisons.
12. Don’t Neglect Cash Flow and Burn Rate
Revenue and profit are important, but so is understanding how much cash you’re burning and how long your runway is. Clearly indicate your monthly burn rate and when you’ll need to raise your next round.
Investors want to know how long their money will last and when you’ll hit the milestones necessary for future funding or self-sustainability. This also shows whether you’ve built a capital-efficient business.
If you’re asking for $2 million, show how that maps onto your hiring plan, go-to-market strategy, and anticipated growth. A breakdown of how funds will be allocated—such as 40% on product development, 30% on marketing, etc.—is useful.
13. Avoid Jargon and Complex Formulas
Your investors may be financially savvy, but they may not be specialists in your specific industry or model. Avoid obscure metrics and formulas unless they’re truly necessary.
Stick to plain English wherever possible. For example, instead of saying “Net Present Value of CAC payback period,” simply say, “We recover CAC in 4 months.” Clarity beats complexity every time.
If you do need to include specialized metrics, briefly define them or include them in a glossary at the end of your deck or in an appendix.
14. Test It with Advisors and Investors
Before finalizing your deck, test your financials slide with a few trusted mentors or early investors. Ask them what stands out, what’s unclear, and what questions they’d have. If they find something confusing, investors probably will too.
This feedback can help you tweak the presentation and refine your talking points for the actual pitch meeting.
15. Update Your Slide Frequently
Financials are a living part of your business plan. As you acquire more customers, hire new staff, or refine your business model, your projections should change. A stale or outdated slide suggests you’re not actively managing your business.
Make it a habit to update your financials regularly and tailor them for different types of investors—angel, seed, Series A, etc. What matters to a pre-seed investor may not be as relevant to a growth-stage fund.
Conclusion
Your financials slide is more than just a bunch of numbers. It’s a compact summary of your vision, your strategy, and your grasp on reality. A well-crafted slide can communicate confidence, competence, and foresight—all the qualities investors look for in a founder.
By focusing on clarity, realism, and alignment with your broader narrative, you can create a financials slide that supports your pitch rather than detracts from it. And if design or structure isn’t your strong suit, seeking out expert pitch deck design services can be a smart investment to ensure your numbers make the right impression.