SaaS Startup Pitch
Recurring revenue, low churn, scalable growth
The definitive guide to pitching a SaaS business. Covers MRR/ARR metrics, churn analysis, expansion revenue, and how to frame your recurring revenue model for maximum investor appeal.
Cover Slide
First impression — company name, tagline, your name and contact.
💡 What to Include
- One-line tagline that explains what you do (not a mission statement)
- Include your logo — it signals professionalism
- Add 'Confidential' if sharing with specific investors
- Keep it clean — no busy backgrounds
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- Vague taglines like 'Revolutionizing the future of work'
- Too much text on the cover
- Missing contact information
📝 Example
Acme Analytics — Real-time customer insights for e-commerce teams. Jane Doe, CEO | jane@acme.io | Series A, $5M
Problem
Make the investor FEEL the pain your customers experience.
💡 What to Include
- Lead with a specific story or scenario, not statistics
- Quantify the cost of the problem ($, time, risk)
- Show who has this problem and how many of them exist
- Make it personal — investors should recognize this pain
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- Making the problem too abstract
- Listing multiple unrelated problems
- Not quantifying the impact
📝 Example
E-commerce managers spend 8 hours/week manually pulling reports from 5+ analytics tools. By the time they act on insights, customer behavior has already changed. Result: $2.3M avg. lost revenue per mid-market retailer annually.
Solution
Show how your product eliminates the problem — simply and clearly.
💡 What to Include
- Lead with the outcome, not the technology
- Use 'before vs. after' framing
- Keep to 3 key benefits maximum
- Include a product screenshot or demo GIF
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- Describing features instead of outcomes
- Overcomplicating the explanation
- No visual of the product
📝 Example
Acme connects all your data sources in one dashboard. Real-time alerts when customer behavior changes. Automated weekly reports that used to take 8 hours now take 0. Before: 8 hours/week → After: Fully automated.
Market Size (TAM/SAM/SOM)
Prove this is a big enough opportunity to generate venture-scale returns.
💡 What to Include
- Use bottom-up sizing (# of customers × price), not just top-down reports
- Show TAM → SAM → SOM funnel with clear logic
- Reference credible sources for market data
- Show market growth rate — investors want expanding markets
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- Using only top-down TAM from analyst reports
- SOM that's unrealistically large
- Not explaining how you get from SAM to SOM
📝 Example
TAM: 2.1M e-commerce businesses globally × $12K avg. annual spend = $25.2B SAM: 340K mid-market retailers in US/EU = $4.1B SOM: 5% market share in 5 years = $205M Market growing 18% CAGR (Gartner 2025).
Product / Demo
Show what you've built — make it tangible and real.
💡 What to Include
- Screenshots of the actual product (not mockups if you have a live product)
- Highlight the 'aha moment' — the feature that makes people go 'wow'
- Show the user journey in 3-4 steps
- If possible, do a 60-second live demo
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- Showing a roadmap instead of what exists
- Too many features on one slide
- Mockups when you have a real product
📝 Example
1. Connect your Shopify/Stripe/GA in 30 seconds 2. See unified customer dashboard instantly 3. Set alerts for behavior changes 4. Get automated weekly insights report [Product screenshot showing dashboard with real data]
Business Model
Show how you make money — and that the unit economics work.
💡 What to Include
- SaaS investors care about: MRR/ARR, ARPU, churn, LTV, CAC, LTV/CAC ratio
- Show pricing tiers with clear upgrade triggers
- Highlight expansion revenue opportunities
- Show gross margin (should be 70%+ for SaaS)
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- Not showing unit economics
- Pricing that's too complex
- Missing gross margin
- Ignoring churn rate
📝 Example
Starter: $49/mo (SMB, up to 1K customers) Growth: $199/mo (mid-market, up to 50K customers) Enterprise: $999/mo (custom, unlimited) Current metrics: ARPU $147/mo | Gross margin 82% | Net revenue retention 125%
Traction & Metrics
Prove the business is working with real data.
💡 What to Include
- Show MRR/ARR growth chart (up and to the right)
- Include: MRR, growth rate, # customers, churn, NRR
- If pre-revenue, show user growth, engagement, waitlist
- Highlight inflection points and what caused them
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- Showing vanity metrics (signups, page views)
- Hiding churn or cherry-picking time periods
- No context for the numbers
📝 Example
MRR: $87K (growing 15% MoM) ARR: $1.04M Customers: 420 (from 12 at launch 18 months ago) Net Revenue Retention: 125% Logo churn: 3% monthly → 1.8% after product improvements NPS: 62
Go-to-Market Strategy
Explain how you'll acquire customers efficiently and at scale.
💡 What to Include
- Show current acquisition channels with CAC for each
- Explain the sales motion (self-serve, inside sales, enterprise)
- Show the customer journey from discovery to paid
- Demonstrate scalable channels (not just founder-led sales)
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- 'We'll go viral' without evidence
- No CAC numbers
- Only one acquisition channel
- Ignoring the sales cycle length
📝 Example
Current channels: • Content/SEO (40% of leads, $23 CAC) • Partnerships with Shopify ecosystem (30%, $45 CAC) • Outbound SDRs (20%, $180 CAC) • Referrals (10%, $0 CAC) Blended CAC: $62 | LTV/CAC: 19x | Payback: 4 months
Competition
Show you understand the landscape and have a defensible position.
💡 What to Include
- Use a 2x2 matrix or feature comparison (NOT a Gartner magic quadrant)
- Be honest about competitors — investors know them
- Highlight your unfair advantage / moat
- Explain why customers choose you over alternatives
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- 'We have no competition'
- Unfair comparison axes designed to make you win
- Not knowing competitor pricing
📝 Example
Competitive axes: Ease of use vs. Depth of insights Mixpanel: Deep but complex, $25K+ ACV, 3-month implementation Google Analytics: Free but surface-level, no actionable alerts Amplitude: Strong product analytics, weak on e-commerce specifics Acme: Purpose-built for e-commerce, 30-second setup, real-time alerts. Win rate vs. competitors: 68% (from last 50 competitive deals).
Team
Prove you're the right people to execute this vision.
💡 What to Include
- Highlight relevant experience (industry expertise, prior exits, domain knowledge)
- Show team completeness (tech + business + domain)
- Include key advisors if they add credibility
- Photos make it personal
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- Listing everyone including interns
- No relevant domain experience
- Missing key roles (no CTO for a tech company)
📝 Example
Jane Doe, CEO — 10 years in e-commerce analytics at Shopify (led analytics team) John Smith, CTO — Ex-Stripe engineer, built real-time data pipelines Maria Garcia, VP Sales — Scaled Amplitude from $2M to $20M ARR Advisors: [notable names with relevant background]
Financial Projections
Show a credible path to a venture-scale outcome.
💡 What to Include
- 3-year projections with clear assumptions
- Show path to key milestones ($1M, $5M, $10M ARR)
- Bottom-up build: # customers × ARPU × retention
- Include burn rate and runway
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- Hockey stick with no logic behind it
- Projections that don't tie to bottoms-up math
- Ignoring the cost side
📝 Example
Year 1: $1.8M ARR (500 customers, $300 ARPU) Year 2: $6.2M ARR (1,400 customers, $370 ARPU, 125% NRR) Year 3: $18M ARR (3,200 customers, $470 ARPU) Assumptions: 15% MoM growth Y1, 10% Y2, 8% Y3. Churn drops from 3% to 1.5%.
The Ask
Tell investors exactly what you need and what you'll do with it.
💡 What to Include
- State the amount and round type clearly
- Show use of funds in 3-4 buckets
- Define milestones the raise will achieve
- Mention existing investors / commitments if any
⚠️ Common Mistakes
- Not stating the amount
- Vague use of funds
- No milestones tied to the raise
- Asking for too much or too little
📝 Example
Raising $5M Series A Use of funds: • Engineering (50%) — build enterprise features, mobile app • Sales & Marketing (30%) — hire 5 SDRs, scale content • Operations (20%) — customer success, infrastructure Milestones: $5M ARR, 1,000 customers, enterprise readiness within 18 months.
More Pitch Guides
Ready to Build Your SaaS Startup Pitch?
Upload your deck and get instant AI-powered scoring and feedback.
Analyze Your Deck →
AI-powered pitch deck analysis and feedback platform helping startups create compelling presentations that raise millions in funding.
© 2026 Pitch AI. 2026 All rights reserved.