Reading a Pitch Deck Like an Investment Manager

The pitch deck is one of the first documents investors get to see from a startup, and its job is to persuade them to invest. Christoph Schweizer, then head of investment at Companisto, explained how an investment team evaluates these presentations in a January 2022 masterclass aimed mainly at founders. The criteria his team used to sift through hundreds of decks a year can also help private investors read a pitch deck with a critical eye.

In January 2022, Christoph Schweizer would have set aside a pitch deck dated “September ’21” without reading it. “Then I don’t even read it,” said Companisto’s head of investment at the time. There are four months between September and January, he pointed out, and “especially in the startup phase, four months is a lifetime.”

There was a practical reason for this strictness. Pitch decks were arriving at Companisto by the dozen back then, adding up to hundreds a year. Each deck was first read by one of the investment managers on the eight-person team. If that manager concluded that it was “a particularly interesting case with an understandable, tangible opportunity,” the deck went to the deal-flow meeting held every Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. There, the manager first had to convince colleagues that the case was worth further work. Every due diligence review, a thorough examination of a company, takes “an enormous amount of energy, time, and other resources,” Schweizer said. If a pitch deck didn’t send a clear signal that it was worth the effort, he said, it was shelved “relatively quickly.”

Investors sit at the far end of this filter. It helps determine which startups make it to a funding round on Companisto at all. Today, several hundred applications come in each quarter; about nine companies get a funding round. Investors also get to see a pitch deck from the startup. Registered users can page through it and download it on the investment pages. The documents that govern the investment decision are the round’s mandatory and contractual documents, such as the key information document (Basisinformationsblatt) and the investment documents. Still, investors can borrow the questions the investment team asked of a deck. The simplest one concerns the date: Funding rounds often run for weeks or months, and figures that were current at the start may be out of date by the end.

How the investment team screened startups

A pitch deck is a startup’s “first ticket in” with investors, Schweizer said, adding that these days there often isn’t a fully worked-out business plan at all. In condensed form, he said, the deck should show what opportunity a business holds, where the company stands, what it has achieved, and why management is looking for capital right now. The opportunity has to “really jump out” at the reader. If it does, the team would want to see the detailed financial plan and meet the founding team as soon as possible, ideally on site at the company.

Every case went through the same three-step process, which Schweizer, speaking in German, described with three English terms. They still appear today in the requirements Companisto sets for applications:

• Use Case: What benefit does the offering provide? The benefit had to be tangible and easy for anyone to understand, Schweizer said, because Companisto works with a very large group of investors. That doesn’t mean a topic has to be trivial, he added. He recalled that someone once jokingly compared the investment team to the editorial team of “Die Sendung mit der Maus” (“The Show with the Mouse”), a German children’s program whose makers have to understand complex subjects themselves before they can explain them simply.
• Business Case: How economically viable is the business model, and how quickly can it be scaled up? Because investors provide risk capital, the investment team looked for models that can grow fast and generate a return within a reasonable period, so that money can flow back to investors within a “time frame that can at least be modeled.”
• Investment Case: On what terms could investors come in for the investment to be worthwhile? A case is interesting when there is a clear opportunity to get in and a clear idea of how to get out, Schweizer said during the Q&A. The exit, for example through a sale of the company, has to be “somehow visible on the horizon.”

Schweizer was clear on this point: If an exit isn’t foreseeable within the next five years and management doesn’t want one either, “then it will be very hard for us to find common ground.” The five years served as a yardstick for selection; they were not a promise to investors. The calculations were based on the exit scenario that the founders and the investment team jointly considered the most stable, “knowing full well, of course, that there are 100 unknowns in there.” The younger the company was and the more it still had to prove, the higher the return in this scenario had to be, according to Schweizer. Projections like these rest on assumptions; whether and when an exit succeeds, and whether investors earn anything at all, is an open question.

Moat, market, and numbers

On the investment team’s list, which Schweizer called “ultimately subjective,” the moat came after the problem and the offering. Schweizer, an economist, preferred this metaphor to the abbreviation USP (unique selling proposition). It describes the distance a company can put between itself and its competitors, for example through patents, partnerships with strong market players that help with sales, or shareholders and experts who make a difference. A strategy can’t be laid out on a few slides, he said. But there should be a recognizable logic for how sales, product, and marketing develop and reinforce one another. A line like “We’ll hire ten more people and really make some noise in marketing” always sounds pretty good, he said, but it isn’t enough.

When it came to the market, Schweizer warned against a calculation along the lines of “The addressable market is 50 billion, and we’ll take 5 percent of it.” It is more convincing, he said, to define the market precisely, name the actual competitors, and explain why the startup could get a piece of the pie. Competition in itself isn’t a deterrent. If a business model resembles one that has already succeeded, that first of all proves the market exists, Schweizer said in response to a question from the audience. The next thing to clarify is whether the startup can dig a moat of its own. If anything, he said, large competitors are a sign that a buyer can be found in the end.

As for the numbers, the investment team wanted to see the key metrics, not the full financial plan. They were meant to show that the founders understood their own plan and that it fit what they were saying about their business model. Schweizer found it “pretty neat” when founders comment on their figures, for example with a sentence like “We’ve budgeted for staff because we have six or seven interesting candidates we’d like to hire soon.” The use of proceeds, meaning what the money raised is to be spent on, belongs at the end of the deck, he said.

Revenue alone told the investment team little. Asked whether it was even worth applying with very low revenue, Schweizer replied that companies with no revenue had also been financed through Companisto; what mattered was the outlook for the next two or three years. The less revenue a startup can show, however, the more of what its pitch deck promises rests on assumptions.

A pitch deck doesn’t have to explain everything. “A pitch deck is a teaser; it’s a first chance to get to know each other,” Schweizer said. The reasoning can be “a bit broad-brush,” in his view, and evidence and sources are better placed in the business plan. But if something essential is missing, that leaves room for speculation, and that “almost always” leads to a deck being put “in the wrong pile.”

What the founders had to show

Every investor says the team is what matters. At Companisto, though, the founding team carried particular weight, according to Schweizer. Because the platform raised the money for each financing round from its investors separately (deal by deal), the investment team stood “on stage” together with the founders in every round. A well-educated, experienced founding team was therefore not enough, he said. “Something also has to click between us, in terms of chemistry, on a human level,” Schweizer said. “We need trust. That’s one of my key words, one I use 30 times a day.” The investment team wanted to see early clues in the pitch deck about the personalities it was dealing with, for example when founders describe how they met and decided to start a company together.

Schweizer was cautious about serial founders who had already built and sold a company. For many people, he said, that is a kind of shortcut: It worked once, so it will work again. “Speaking from my own experience, I’m always a bit skeptical about that, because unfortunately I’ve seen too often that this is exactly what doesn’t work.” A track record is all well and good, he said. But the pitch deck has to show why the hunger and enthusiasm are still there.

In the Q&A, Schweizer drew clear lines. Financing through Companisto was not an option for solo founders at the time; if only for reasons of risk, he said, management responsibility had to be shared. Founders who wanted to keep working at another company alongside the startup would also have a hard time, he said: “I couldn’t seriously explain to anyone why the management team […] isn’t giving 150 percent to its own company.” And when someone in the audience said that potential co-founders didn’t want to give up their secure corporate jobs, the answer was brief: “Then the idea isn’t good enough yet.”

Signals and stories

One of the strongest signals, in Schweizer’s view, was an investor who wanted to co-invest in the same round on the same terms. That carries more weight than a backer who is already on board, he said, because the new co-investor is then “in the same risk class” as the investors coming in through Companisto. Awards, prizes, early market successes, or partnerships could also help, though Schweizer felt that some founders overdid it.

Storytelling is “not a bad thing,” Schweizer said. It means being able to convey a complex matter in a short, concise story that makes the other person want to be in on it, no matter what. A good pitch deck reads like a book you can’t put down, he said. By the end, the reader should ideally want to pick up the phone right away to meet the founding team; their biggest worry at that point would be missing out. Investors who feel exactly this pull while reading have good reason to pause and check whether the numbers support the story.

Who sets the price

For investors, the valuation is the price at which they buy in. Schweizer considered it a mistake for founders to put their own valuation expectations in the pitch deck, as “unfortunately, a great many” of them now do: Forming a view of a company’s value is the investor’s central task, he said, and investors don’t like being dictated to on that point. If a startup writes that it is “definitely” worth €18.2 million before the round (the pre-money valuation), that invites pushback: “It practically dares you to prove that it’s exactly the other way around.” On the other hand, he said, there’s no harm in mentioning that an earlier round took place at a certain valuation.

At Companisto, the valuation was a matter for negotiation at the time. The investment team entered its findings from due diligence into its standard templates and discussed the valuation and the size of the investment with the founders “on an open Excel sheet” until a stable solution emerged. In the process, he said, the team disclosed to the founders which multiples it used and how it arrived at them. That is why Schweizer called it “a bit of an overreach” to set a valuation in the pitch deck.

Which method fits depends on the company. A DCF valuation, which is based on forecasts of future cash flows, is of no use at very early stages, he said, because the data isn’t there yet. Instead, investors often compare similar companies or use the venture capital method, which works backward from the expected value at exit to today’s value. When asked during the Q&A about the comparability of valuations, Schweizer pointed to the investment analysis, in which the investment team also explained, for every investment opportunity, the principles it had used to determine the valuation.

Four examples and what became of them

“For me personally, this opportunity is the really, really decisive thing,” Schweizer said, referring to the chance a company has right now. As examples, he cited four startups that had been financed through Companisto in 2021. One of them, he said, had been able to show very credibly that its product met a market need at exactly the right time: A well-known market player was already using it. In the pitch deck, this was initially only vaguely sketched out, carried by “a very, very high level of conviction” that the founding team had passed on to the investment team. The second example involved serial founders who, in Schweizer’s words, managed to show why it could work again. Once the investment team understood what was driving the founders, it took a closer look at the case, even though the business initially looked “a bit like a commodity,” an interchangeable standard product. With two other startups, Schweizer felt, the founders succeeded in using their pitch decks to show that they, in exactly this combination, were the ones “called” to take their product to market and, in part, to change that market.

Nearly five years later, the picture is mixed. Insolvency proceedings were opened for each of the first two startups in 2024; the other two are still active (as of October 2026). Four cases are not enough to pass judgment on the selection made at the time; young companies often fail, even after a thorough review. But the examples show how long the road from a convincing presentation to a viable business can be.

Eight questions to ask of a pitch deck

Recast as questions, Schweizer’s advice to founders also helps investors who read a pitch deck on an investment page:

• Why does the startup need money right now, and for what? A good deck explains where the company stands, what opportunity it wants to seize, and what the capital raised is to be used for.
• What protects the business from copycats? Patents, strong partnerships, or experienced shareholders are more reliable than the claim to be unique.
• Is the founding team complete and fully committed? Several founders who share responsibility and devote themselves fully to the startup are a good sign. With serial founders, it’s worth asking what drives them to do it again.
• Is the market clearly defined? A figure in the billions with a blanket market share is no substitute for a market analysis or a look at the actual competitors.
• Are the figures current and easy to follow? Figures that are months old may be long out of date at a young company. Annotated projections suggest that the founders understand their plan; gaps leave room for speculation.
• Who else is investing, and on what terms? Schweizer saw a co-investor coming in during the same round on the same terms as one of the strongest signals. Equal terms do not mean equal rights, however; which rights investors receive depends on how the round is structured. If the startup is a limited liability company (GmbH), investors who come in through Companisto in the public round acquire profit participation certificates (Genussscheine) issued by a special purpose vehicle (SPV), which in turn holds a stake in the startup; they do not become shareholders of the startup. If it is a stock corporation (AG), they usually become shareholders whose voting rights are exercised on a pooled basis.
• How was the valuation arrived at? If the pitch deck states a valuation, that figure is, at this stage, the founders’ own idea. What counts is the valuation at which the round is offered; it is revealing to see how it was derived and how it compares with earlier funding rounds and comparable companies.
• Is an exit conceivable? An exit, such as a sale of the company, should be visible on the horizon and something management wants. Whether and when it happens remains uncertain.

A pitch deck rarely mentions risks; they are set out in the risk warnings and mandatory documents for the round. Only a thorough review, due diligence, shows whether the information in the deck holds up, and even that does not uncover every risk.

The article What Investors Should Look for in a Pitch Deck explains what a pitch deck typically contains.

Conclusion

For the investment team, the pitch deck was a filter: It decided whether a thorough review was worthwhile, not yet whether to invest. Investors can use it in a similar way, as a starting point for questions about how current the figures are, about co-investors, and about how the valuation was derived, and as a prompt to watch for gaps. The more strongly a deck makes you want to be in on it no matter what, the more this applies.

On Companisto, investors can read the investment team’s view, the investment analysis, alongside the pitch deck for every startup funding round. Among other things, it explains how the valuation was arrived at, and in a SWOT analysis it also names weaknesses and risks that usually get short shrift in a pitch deck. As an intermediary, however, Companisto has a financial interest in rounds going ahead. The analysis is no substitute for an investor’s own review or for the mandatory and contractual documents, and even a startup that has received a funding round can fail.

Before an exit, startup investments can be sold only to a limited extent, if at all. Anyone investing in startups should therefore commit only money they can do without for many years and could afford to lose entirely, and should spread it across several investments.

Note: This article is based on the Companisto masterclass of January 20, 2022. Information on the review process and on how the investment team worked reflects the situation at that time, unless the present is explicitly referred to; the linked recording reflects the situation as of January 2022 throughout. Information on the companies mentioned and on Companisto’s current offering is as of October 2026. This text is for general information purposes and does not constitute investment advice; it is neither an offer nor a solicitation to acquire investment products (Vermögensanlagen) or securities. Investing in startups involves considerable risks and can lead to the total loss of the capital invested. Returns are not guaranteed. The capital invested is tied up for the long term, and the investments can be sold only to a limited extent.