Founders often ask for a pitch deck when they need a teaser, or write a fifty-page business plan for an investor who will read 4 slides. These are not longer and shorter versions of one document. They are 3 products for three different readers.
3 documents, 3 jobs
- Investor teaser. 1 to 2 pages, frequently anonymised. Its only job is to get a meeting or an NDA signed. Read in under 2 minutes.
- Pitch deck. Twelve to eighteen slides. Its job is to hold a conversation and survive the questions that follow it. Read in 10 minutes, then re-read alone.
- Business plan. Twenty to forty pages. Its job is to answer, in writing, everything an institution has to satisfy itself on before committing. Read by someone who has to justify a decision internally.
| Teaser | Pitch deck | Business plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Length | 1 to 2 pages | 12 to 18 slides | 20 to 40 pages |
| Reader | A screener | A partner or angel | A committee, bank or authority |
| Purpose | Get the meeting | Hold the room | Satisfy the process |
| Named | Often not | Yes | Yes |
| Financials shown | Headline only | Summary, 3 years | Full, with assumptions |
| From | $450 | $450 | Quoted on scope |
Which one you actually need
Raising from venture or angels: a deck, and nothing else initially. A business plan sent unrequested to a seed investor signals a misread of how the decision gets made.
Selling the business, or raising through an intermediary: a teaser first, then an information memorandum once an NDA is signed. The teaser exists precisely so that you can approach a list without disclosing who you are.
Bank debt, a government programme, a visa or licence application, or a corporate partner: a business plan. These readers have a checklist and the document has to answer it in the order they expect.
If nobody replied, the usual reason is not that the business was uninteresting. It is that the reader was sent a document written for somebody else.
What they have to share
All three read from the same financial model, and this is where most sets fall apart. When the deck says a number the plan contradicts, the reader stops evaluating the business and starts auditing the paperwork.
We build these from the model rather than retyping out of it, which sounds like a process detail and is the whole difference. Change an assumption and every document changes with it, because none of them contains a typed number.
What each one gets wrong most often
- Teasers that give away enough to make the NDA pointless, or so little that nobody can tell whether it is worth a call.
- Decks built as a written document with slides. If it reads without a presenter it is too dense to present, and if it cannot be sent afterwards it is not doing half its job.
- Business plans with a financial section written last, by someone who did not build the model. The reader checks the numbers against the narrative first, because it is the fastest test available.
What it costs
Investor materials start at $450. The variable is not page count, it is whether a usable model exists underneath. If it does, the document is a communication exercise. If it does not, the model comes first at $1,250, and the documents get cheaper and better as a result.
Before you commission anything
Write down one sentence: who is reading this, and what do they have to be able to do after reading it? Get a meeting, ask a good question, or sign off internally. Those 3 answers point at three different documents, and only one of them is the one you were about to order.