Raising a seed round is one of the most critical milestones for an early-stage startup. To secure funding, founders need a clear, compelling pitch deck that communicates their vision effectively. Y Combinator’s guide on building a seed round pitch deck lays out a practical template to help founders tell their story with clarity and focus.

Title Slide

The title slide should simply state the company name and a one-line description of what the company does. For example, “Kuanta: the GenAI platform disrupting startup evaluation by turning analyst labor into software.” This opening line sets the stage and gives immediate clarity to the investor about what the company offers.

Problem

This slide explains the pain point being solved, making it clear and relatable. For example, “venture investors face thousands of pitch decks every year, making evaluations slow, expensive, and often biased, which results in missed opportunities because promising startups get overlooked in the overwhelming deal flow”.

Solution

This section introduces the product or service that directly solves the outlined problem. A clear explanation would be: “Kuanta offers a proprietary GenAI model that provide VC grade startup evaluations and actionable feedback in just two minutes, cutting both costs and time dramatically while eliminating human bias from the process.

Traction

This slide presents early signs of progress and market validation. Strong traction could include “completed over 4,700 startup evaluations since launching in February 2025, running pilots with 17 accelerators, venture funds, universities, and government partners across six countries and 5 PoCs with large MNC’s.

Why You Are Special / Insights

This section explains the unique insights or technology that set the company apart and make the solution possible. For example, Kuanta’s strength lies in its proprietary model and database, tailored for unstructured startup data, up to date industry research and competitor analysis.

Business Model

This part shows how the company generates revenue, even if all the details are still evolving. The business model might include $49 USD monthly fees for basic accounts, free trials offered to organizations to increase adoption, and SaaS subscriptions designed for larger institutional clients and enterprise accounts, with optional API and white-label partnerships.

Market

This slide explains the size of the opportunity and how big the company can grow within it. Tip: Combine the top-down with a bottom-up approach! e.g. “The global venture capital market sits at $453 billion, with around $7.9 billion spent on evaluation and analytics AND there are 50 million new startups each year where we predict to perform 500k evaluations per month”.

Team

This section introduces the founders and why they are especially suited to tackle this problem. For example, that the founding team have fintech expertise and leadership experience, senior AI engineers and full-stack developers, as well as, members business development experience, and industry advisors.

The Ask (Funding)

This slide explains how much money the company is raising and what it plans to accomplish with it. The current raise is $X million in seed funding to scale from MVP to a full product, expand into international markets, invest in R&D and marketing, and reach Series A–ready milestones within 12 to 18 months, with a 24-month runway.