This article is part of the Startup Coach series, by Early Game Ventures, dedicated entirely to the pitch deck — the most important document you will write as a founder looking to raise VC funding. The series walks through, step by step, the structure of a compelling deck: from how you shape the story to what each individual slide should contain.

You’ve gone through the entire journey. You’ve articulated a clear and painful problem. You’ve proposed a solution that isn’t incremental. You’ve explained how you make money, who you compete with, and why you can’t be easily copied. You’ve shown that your team is the right one for this exact startup. The entire narrative construction leads to a single moment: the slide where you ask for money.

This is probably the simplest slide in the entire deck in terms of structure. And yet, many founders miss it — either through lack of clarity, lack of courage, or simply by omitting essential information.

Four Questions. No Exceptions.

The funding round slide must answer exactly four questions. If any of them is missing, the deck is incomplete — no matter how strong the other slides are.

1. How much are you raising?
A clear number. Not a wide range that signals you don’t know what you want, not a vague phrase like “a seed round.” A specific amount or a tight range: “We are raising €1.5M.” If you provide a range, it must be narrow and explainable: “We are raising between €1.5M and €2M.”

2. What will you do with the money?
Not an exhaustive list of expenses, but a clear allocation across major categories: product and technology, team, go-to-market, operations. Investors want to understand your priorities, not your accounting. If 60% of the capital goes into engineering and 30% into sales, that says something about your stage and what you see as the main bottleneck. If you can’t explain the allocation in a few lines, it means you lack strategic clarity about your priorities.

3. How long will money last?
Runway — how many months of operations the round will cover. The acceptable standard is 18–24 months. Less than 12 months and investors know you’ll quickly be in survival mode, with no time to build. More than 24 months and either you’re asking for too much or planning to spend too little — both raise questions. Be specific: “18 months of runway” is a good answer. “Enough to reach product-market fit” is not.

4. What will the company look like after you’ve used the capital?
This is the most important of the four — and the one most often omitted. Investors don’t put money in to fund activity. They put money in to fund transformation. What will be different about your company in 18 months compared to today? What specific objectives will you reach? How many customers, what revenue, what product milestones, what team, what traction?

The answer must be ambitious but credible — directly connected to the capital allocation you’ve just presented. If 60% of the money goes into product, the product milestones must be impressive. If 40% goes into sales, the commercial targets must reflect that.

About Valuation: Should You Put It on the Slide or Not?

Many founders hesitate to include the company’s current valuation on this slide. It’s a valid decision either way.

You can include it if you have a solid basis for the number — market comparables, a previous round anchoring it, a clear dilution logic. If the valuation is there and defensible, you save time and show that you’ve fully thought through the transaction.

You can also choose not to include it if you prefer to negotiate it during discussions, after the investor is already convinced of the opportunity. A valuation negotiated after a relationship is built is almost always better than one written on a slide before the investor fully understands the stakes.

What you cannot do is leave any of the four core questions unanswered. Valuation is optional. The other four are not.

Why Clarity on This Slide Sets You Apart from Most Founders

There’s a frustrating reality: most founders who sit in front of an investor cannot clearly and concisely answer all four questions. Either the amount is vague, the allocation is improvised, the runway hasn’t been properly calculated, or the vision of how the company will look like in 18 months is either missing or is too vague.

If you answer all four convincingly, you are already ahead of 90% of the founders that the investor has met. Not because you have a better product or a better team — but because you demonstrate that you think like an operator, not like a dreamer. That you know where you are, where you want to go, and what you need to get there.

That is, in essence, what a VC investor evaluates when reading the last slide of your deck: not whether the dream is beautiful, but whether the person in front of them knows what they’re doing.

If you want to learn what a pitch deck should look like overall, read the article here. And if you want to understand how important the cover slide is, you can find more information here.

Deepen your knowledge by following the episodes about the Problem, Solution, Competition, Business Model & Team slides. (insert links)

Are you building something ambitious and ready to raise a round? Early Game Ventures is a venture capital fund in the top 10% of European funds, investing between €500K and €2M as a first ticket in European startups — often from the idea stage, before things are “obvious.” We invest in tech companies at the Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A stages, with a focus on CEE and Europe, as lead investor. If you have a bold thesis and a pitch with substance, write to us at office@earlygame.vc or send us your deck directly at earlygame.vc.