Pitching & Negotiation
Craft Your Story, Build the Perfect Pitch Deck, and Launch the Venture of Your Dreams
A beginner's handbook for building investor relationships, telling a clear story, and assembling a ten-slide pitch deck.
The big idea
Baehr and Loomis argue that getting funded rests on two things founders often neglect: relationships built well before the ask, and a story clear enough that the deck simply supports it. The first half of the book breaks down the pitch deck into ten building-block slides, with guidance on story, design, and text, and annotated real decks. The second half covers funding sources and a relationship-building method the authors call the friendship loop.
Key takeaways
Investors mostly back people they already know and trust. The authors encourage founders to start meeting potential investors, advisors, and board members long before they need money, and to treat those relationships as genuine rather than transactional. Their friendship loop is a repeatable way to meet people, add value, stay in touch, and eventually invite them in.
A pitch works when the listener understands who has the problem, why it hurts, and why your solution fits now. The authors offer templates for several kinds of stories a founder should be able to tell. The numbers matter, but they land as proof of a story the investor already follows.
The book breaks a deck into ten core slides: overview, opportunity, problem, solution, traction, customer, competition, business model, team, and use of funds. Each answers a question an investor is likely to have at that point. Adapt the order to your strengths, but make sure every question gets answered somewhere.
A cluttered slide suggests cluttered thinking. Keep one main idea per slide, use visuals that make a single point, and cut text to what the listener needs. The authors include a crash course in visual design and annotated real decks to show what clear looks like in practice.
The book surveys the main sources of startup funding and how they differ in expectations, check size, and process. Knowing which source fits your business and stage keeps you from pitching the wrong audience, such as approaching venture funds with a company better suited to friends-and-family money, grants, or loans.
State how much you are raising, what it will be spent on, and which milestones it should reach. A specific use-of-funds slide shows that you have a plan and gives investors a way to judge whether the amount is sensible for what it buys. Vague asks invite vague answers.
The authors include pitching exercises drawn from design-school and accelerator programs. Delivering the pitch repeatedly, to varied listeners, exposes weak spots that look fine on paper and builds the fluency to handle questions without losing the thread. Rehearsal also shortens the pitch, since you learn what can be cut.
The framework
| Slides | Question each answers |
|---|---|
| Overview | What is this, in one line? |
| Opportunity and problem | Why does this matter, and who is hurting? |
| Solution and traction | What did you build, and is anyone using it? |
| Customer and competition | Who buys, and what else could they choose? |
| Business model and team | How do you make money, and why this team? |
| Use of funds | How much, for what, and to reach which milestones? |
Apply it this week
Read next
A start-to-finish walkthrough of raising early-stage capital, from preparing materials and finding investors to term sheets and closing.
A practical look at why some people get funded and supported while others with equally good ideas get politely ignored.
A method for controlling the frame of a pitch so investors and buyers engage with your idea instead of picking it apart.
This page is an original summary and commentary prepared by XRAYCLOUD.AI with AI assistance. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the author or publisher, and it is no substitute for the book — read it for the full argument.