Only one in 25,000 (.004%) of all new businesses ever reach $100 million in sales. Even fewer achieve the esteemed title of a unicorn (a startup valued at $1 billion). As of March 2022, there are only over 1,000 unicorn companies in the world, according to Investopedia.
When you look at some of these massive, multi-billion-dollar organizations such as Uber, Facebook, or LinkedIn, it can be difficult to see them as anything other than market-leading titans. However, the majority (if not all) of these companies came from humble beginnings, and their co-founders went through the arduous process of finding seed funding and courting investors.
For both founders & funders, the pitch decks that helped these companies raise financing in their early phases are incredibly edifying references — we’ve created a list of the early-stage investor pitch decks behind 29 billion-dollar “unicorn” startups:
- Airbnb
- Alan
- Appnexus
- Brex
- Buzzfeed
- Canva
- Coinbase
- Dropbox
- Foursquare
- Intercom
- Mixpanel
- Monzo
- MySQL
- N26
- Nutanix
- Oscar
- Pendo
- Revolut
- SendGrid
- SNYK
- Tinder
- Uber
- Wealthsimple
- WeWork
- TransferWise
- Yammer
- YouTube
Airbnb
Airbnb (formerly known as AirBed & Breakfast, Inc.) was established in 2007 in San Francisco, California. Airbnb included Couchsurfing, Craigslist, Hostels.com, and Hotels.com as competitors in their first pitch deck (see teardown here). Just over a decade later, the revolutionary hospitality startup’s net worth would soar to $86.5 billion by the end of Airbnb’s first day of trading on public markets in December 2020, surpassing the combined market capitalizations of Hilton, Marriott, and InterContinental Hotels.
COVID-19 significantly impacted Airbnb, which raised Series G funding in April 2020 which roughly halved its valuation to $18 billion. According to the founders: “A crisis brings you clarity about what is truly important.”
Nevertheless, the original Airbnb investor presentation has become a trusted reference for founders and a staple of early-stage startup lore — serving as the basis of the pitch deck formulas popularized by all-time great investors like Sequoia Capital and Y-Combinator. We have even published our own expert pitch deck teardown and presentation template based on the Airbnb Pitch Deck!
IPO Valuation: $47 billion
Amount Raised: $600k
Round: Pre-Seed
Alan
Alan is a digital platform that makes health insurance more convenient and inexpensive. The French tech startup achieved unicorn status after securing a massive new investment round in 2021. The infusion of €185 million ($220 million) in funding valued the company at €1.4 billion ($1.67 billion).
The original Alan pitch deck consisted of 42 slides in total and was used to raise the company’s $54M Series C round, with the goal of becoming “the leader in France” for health insurance. Since its inception, the company has raised $363 million in total funding, and served over 260,000 users, including 14,000 enterprise clients.
Current Valuation: $1.67 billion
Amount Raised: $54m
Round: Series A
Appnexus
AppNexus operates a cloud-based software platform that enables and optimizes programmatic online advertising. Shared by the lead investor First Round Capital, the following deck was utilized by AppNexus for their Seed round in 2007.
By 2020, the company grew to one of the largest digital ad exchanges in the world. Appnexus was acquired by AT&T in June 2018 for an estimated $1.6 billion to $2 billion and merged into AT&T’s ad tech unit, Xandr. AT&T subsequently sold the unit to Microsoft for an unknown sum.
Value at AT&T acquisition: $1.6B-$2B
Amount Raised: $2.5M
Round: Seed
Brex
Brex is a fintech startup that provides credit cards and cash management solutions to startups & founders with the goal of helping them save and spend money. It enables businesses of all sizes to rapidly obtain a credit card with 20x higher limits, entirely automates spending management, eliminates receipt monitoring, and magically integrates with accounting systems. Brex used this pitch deck to raise $57 in a Series B funding round in 2018. The most recent valuation puts the company at $12.3 billion. Although the company had to lay off 62 employees due to the pandemic, it has raised roughly $1 billion in funding since May 2020 as the race to dominate the corporate expenditures sector heats up.
Founders in the fintech & credit card space may be interested in our expert-designed Brex Pitch Deck template (based on the original $2.5M Brex investor presentation)!
Current Valuation: $12.3B
Amount Raised: $2.5M
Round: Seed
Buzzfeed
BuzzFeed is a multi-platform digital media firm that provides news and entertainment to a global audience. BuzzFeed had only five individuals operating in an office in Chinatown in 2008, writing for a monthly readership of 700,000 visitors, and used this presentation deck to raise $3.5 million in Series A investment. In March 2020, the website claimed more than 1.2 billion unique page views across its websites for the month, as well as a 41 percent year-over-year (YoY) increase in unique visitors, despite having to enact wage cuts and lay off approximately 6 percent of its US workers as a result of the pandemic. BuzzFeed went public in December 2021 through a SPAC merger.
Founders in the media &/or advertising space may be interested in our expert-designed BuzzFeed Pitch Deck template (based on the original BuzzFeed Series A investor presentation)!
Valuation at SPAC merger: $1.7B
Amount Raised: $3.5M
Round: Series A
Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform that includes a drag-and-drop design tool as well as a stock library of pictures, illustrations, and iconography. This pitch deck helped the company raise $6.6 million in a Seed round. The slides explain how tools like Google Docs are useful but don’t allow for the same kind of collaboration in design as they do for documents & text. The presentation touts the platform as a solution that will drive designers to abandon offline solutions in favor of online publishing. Since this seed round, Canva has received around $570 million in investment, growing its total valuation to $40 billion.
You may be interested in our expert-designed Canva Pitch Deck template — built for editing in Canva!
Current valuation: $40B
Amount Raised: $6.6M
Round: Seed
Coinbase
Coinbase is a cryptocurrency trading and exchange platform established in the United States that caters to retail customers, institutions, and ecosystem partners. This pitch deck helped the company raise $600,000 from angel investors and FundersClub in 2012. Coinbase has since raised an additional $539 million in funding since its humble beginnings in 2012 with this 12-slide presentation.
Current valuation: $86B
Amount Raised: $600K
Round: Seed
Dropbox
Dropbox made its startup debut in the summer of 2007 at the Y Combinator Demo Day. Dropbox’s first pitch deck was shared by Sequoia Capital (their Series A lead investor). This 17-slide deck helped the company raise a $1.2 million seed round that year. The investor presentation provides insight into the company’s freemium business model and bottom-up client acquisition strategy. Dropbox went public in March 2018 with a valuation of more than $12 billion.
Founders in the cloud collaboration &/or software space may be interested in our expert-designed Dropbox Pitch Deck template (based on the original Dropbox Series A investor presentation)!
Current valuation: $72B
Amount Raised: $1.2M
Round: Pre-Seed
Back in 2004, Mark Zuckerberg and a few of his fellow Harvard students launched Facebook as a means for college and university students to communicate with one another. The initial Facebook pitch deck from 2004 was a media package used to secure potential advertisers before going public with the service. The slides emphasize the website’s addictive nature and refer to its user growth rate as a hint of its potential for greater adoption. In August 2004, thefacebook.com received its first investment, a $500K seed round from billionaire venture entrepreneur and ex-PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel.
Founders in the social media space may be interested in our expert-designed Facebook Pitch Deck template (based on the original Facebook presentation from 2004)!
Valuation at IPO: $104B
Amount Raised: $500k
Round: Early Stage
Foursquare
Foursquare is a technology startup that leverages geolocation intelligence to create meaningful consumer experiences and guide business decisions. Foursquare’s 2009 presentation deck described its app as “part friend-finder, part social city-guide, part social-game,” but the firm has now developed into a location data corporation with 15 billion data points on where people spend their time and money.
The company reportedly made more than $100 million in sales in 2019 and subsequently divided into two apps before merging with Factual, another location data company, in April 2020.
Current valuation: $1.1B
Amount Raised: $1.4M
Round: Series A
Intercom
After closing a new Series C round of $50M, Intercom’s former CEO Eoghan McCabe shared the company’s first pitch deck from 2011, adding that raising $600K back then was a “monumental task” for the team.
Intercom’s aim to establish a CRM and communications solution for SaaS vendors is described in the short, 8-slide pitch presentation. The customer chat software startup raised a $125 million Series D investment in March 2018, achieving a unicorn valuation of $1.28 billion.
Current valuation: $1.3B
Amount Raised: $600K
Round: Seed
Reid Hoffman of Greylock shared LinkedIn’s early pitch deck in a blog post explaining how investors resumed interest in the consumer internet in 2004. However, with so many investors still licking their wounds from the dot-com disaster, many were focused on established business models, and LinkedIn’s pitch had to steer into investors’ most pressing concern: a lack of revenue.
LinkedIn had yet to earn a dime of revenue, but the presentation emphasized revenue as a high priority and offered clear comparables for their network-based approach. Before going public in 2011 the firm had raised $103 million in funding; it was acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion in 2016.
Founders in the jobs/recruiting/HCM and professional development space may be interested in our expert-designed LinkedIn Pitch Deck template (based on the original LinkedIn Series B presentation)!
Current valuation: $26.2B
Amount Raised: $10M
Round: Series B
Mixpanel
Suhail Doshi, the founder of Mixpanel, revealed this pitch deck, which raised $65 million in Series B financing at a $865 million valuation. Mixpanel is a real-time analytics solution that provides businesses with insights into how users interact with online applications. Their Series B investor presentation begins with two big statements: people are impulsive, and mobile and online companies don’t understand how to evaluate user engagement.
This 12-slide pitch deck exemplifies the power of a short and powerful narrative in an investor presentation. Y-Combinator, Sequoia Capital, Andreesen-Horowitz, and Bain Capital have all contributed to the company’s total financing of approximately $277 million.
Founders in the analytics & software space may be interested in our expert-designed MixPanel Pitch Deck template (based on the original MixPanel Series B presentation)!
Current valuation: $1.1B
Amount Raised: $65M
Round: Series B
Monzo
Monzo (formerly Mondo) offers digital banking services to those who live their lives on their smartphones, want to get things done quickly, and don’t see the need for banks or checkbooks. Monzo utilized this pitch deck to secure a $2.4 million crowdfunding investment.
This was their second round, having raised a total of $106 million to-date. The pitch deck highlights Monzo’s ambition for worldwide expansion and shows it had only 120,000 users at the time: currently, the company has 5 million users and recently opened in the US.
Current valuation: $4.5B
Amount Raised: £19.3M
Round: Late Stage
MySQL
MySQL enables customers to meet the database difficulties of next-generation online, cloud, and communications services with unrivaled scalability. This presentation from MySQL’s 2003 Series B was provided to us by MySQL’s previous CEO. It is aggressively lengthy, clocking in at 186 slides, and spends 10 slides on the market opportunity alone.
MySQL raised $38 million before being acquired in 2008 by computer maker Sun Microsystems, which was ultimately acquired by Oracle for $7.4 billion. Today, MySQL is one of the most popular and widely used SQL databases.
Valuation at acquisition: $1B
Amount Raised: $16M
Round: Series B
N26
N26 was founded in a Rocket Internet Incubator in Munich in 2013 and currently works in several member countries of the Single Euro Payments Area. It offers a free basic current account and debit card, as well as overdraft and investment products, as well as premium accounts for a monthly cost. N26 was named one of the world’s most promising financial businesses in our 2020 Fintech 250. This 2016 pitch deck assisted it in raising its Series B funding. Since then, N26 has raised more than $1.7 billion, with the most recent round being a Series E tranche in October 2021.
Valuation at acquisition: $9B
Amount Raised: $2M
Round: Seed
Nutanix
Nutanix offers enterprise cloud platform solutions that combine traditional server, virtualization, and storage silos into a single integrated solution. The company exhibited a keen understanding of the concept “less is more” in this pitch deck.
With only 15 slides, the deck focuses the majority of its time on presenting Nutanix’s unique offering and strengths — without getting too technical. The deck concludes with a brief yet memorable phrase: “the fastest growing infrastructure company of the last decade.”
Valuation at IPO: $2.2B
Amount Raised: $101M
Round: Series D
Oscar
Oscar (formerly known as Mulberry Health) is a health insurance company based in the United States that offers products and services to individuals, families, and corporations. The company’s early pitch deck emphasizes its focus on customer experience. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led their Series A round in May 2014, investing $30 million. Forbes reported the company’s valuation at $800 million at the end of Series A.
Oscar Health raised $145 million in the 2015 Series B round, bringing the total capital raised to $300 million and valuing the company at $1.5 billion.
Current Valuation: $9.5B
Amount Raised: $30M
Round: Seed
Pendo
Pendo, which was founded in 2013, assists customers in analyzing product experiences (e.g., user behavior and feedback) and focuses on B2B web-based businesses. The company has raised $469.5 million in investment over 11 rounds. Their most recent fundraising came through a Secondary Market round on November 11, 2021.
Pendo utilized this pitch deck to raise $15 million in their Series B fundraising round.
Current valuation: $2.6B
Amount Raised: $20M
Round: Series B
Revolut
Revolut, a London-based challenger bank, provides a mobile-first banking alternative. Money transfers, vaults, budgeting, bitcoin, mobile phones, and medical insurance are among the company’s primary products. Revolut has raised $1.7 billion in investment over 18 rounds and their most recent fundraising came through a Secondary Market round on August 11, 2021. Revolut was also named one of the world’s most promising fintech businesses in our 2021 Fintech 250 list. The fintech firm claims in its pitch deck that it recruited 4,800 pre-product customers in a month.
Current valuation: $33B
Amount Raised: $66M
Round: Seed
SendGrid
SendGrid is a cloud-based email marketing platform that allows you to send transactional and marketing emails. Among its customers include Airbnb, Pandora, HubSpot, Spotify, Uber, and FourSquare.
SendGrid has received $80.4 million in investment over nine rounds. David Cohen, the co-founder of Techstars, released this investor presentation, which SendGrid used to raise $750K in 2009. Twilio purchased SendGrid in October 2018 for $2 billion in stock at a $3 billion value.
Current valuation: $33B
Amount Raised: $66M
Round: Seed
SNYK
Snyk is a technology firm and subsidiary of Heavybit that provides a software development security platform based on open-source code. It was formed in 2015 by Assaf Hefetz, Danny Grander, and Guy Podjarny in London, England. Ed Sim, the founder of Boldstart Ventures, posted Snyk’s pitch deck from late 2015 (before the business had obtained any money).
Snyk’s valuation has more than doubled from $1 billion in early 2020 to $8.6 billion as of September 2021.
Current valuation: $8.6B
Amount Raised: $2.42M
Round: Seed
Tinder
Tinder anonymously finds people nearby that like each other and connects them if they are both interested. Sean Rad founded Tinder in 2012 at a hackathon held at the startup incubator Hatch Labs in West Hollywood. Tinder has kept many of the original features it envisioned in its pitch deck: their hallmark swipe-based interface, hyper-location, mutual liking, and common friends and interests. Tinder has raised a total of $50M in funding over 3 rounds.
Founders in the dating & social networking space may be interested in our expert-designed Tinder Pitch Deck template (based on the original Matchbox seed investor presentation)!
Current valuation: $3B
Amount Raised: $50M
Round: Seed
Uber
Uber provides services such as peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride-hailing, food delivery, and a bike-sharing system. The company is present in 785 metropolitan regions around the world and its platforms are available via its websites and mobile applications. Garrett Camp, the co-founder of Uber, revealed the company’s first pitch presentation from 2008. The ride-hailing startup estimated at the time that the entire addressable market for cabs was “$4.2B annually and increasing.” Uber’s market capitalization is presently at $65 billion.
Founders in the transportation & logistics space may be interested in our expert-designed Uber Pitch Deck template (based on the original Uber seed investor presentation)!
Current valuation: $91b
Amount Raised: $200K
Round: Early Stage
Wealthsimple
Michael Katchen founded the robo-advisor Wealthsimple in 2014. Katchen stated that his company’s goal was to “provide financial services to everyone, regardless of age or net worth.” The company shared the pitch deck it used to successfully seek $2 million in seed investment in 2014.
Wealthsimple was valued at $4 billion in May 2021, following an equity round that included Greylock Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and celebrities such as Drake and Ryan Reynolds. Wealthsimple has received $900.4 million in investment over nine rounds.
Current valuation: $4B
Amount Raised: $1.9M
Round: Seed
WeWork
WeWork’s 2014 pitch deck outlines visions of rapid growth — specifically its jump from 5,300 members to 16,300 YoY. The company is known for allowing creators to transform buildings into dynamic environments for creativity, focus, and collaboration.
WeWork has raised a total of $21.9B in funding over 22 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on May 11, 2022, from a Post-IPO Debt round. The company had a tumultuous 2019, which saw its $47B valuation slashed to just $8B after its S-1 revealed intense unprofitability, the drama surrounding its co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann, and subsequent mass layoffs.
Founders in the hospitality or real estate space may be interested in our expert-designed WeWork Pitch Deck template (based on the original WeWork Series D presentation)!
Current valuation: $47B
Amount Raised: $335M
Round: Late Stage
TransferWise
Wise (formerly known as TransferWise) offers money transfer services to private persons and corporations and allows them to send money overseas. The company’s 2011 pitch deck describes its aspirations to provide consumers with a less expensive alternative to international bank transfers.
This pitch deck helped convince IA Ventures and Index Ventures to invest in their $1.3 million seed round. Years later, IVP would contribute $396.4 million to the company’s monstrous Series E growth round. Wise raised a total of $680 million before going public on the London Stock Exchange via direct listing in July 2021.
Current valuation: $5B
Amount Raised: $1.3M
Round: Seed
Yammer
Yammer is a workplace social network designed to promote teamwork, empower employees, and drive company transformation. This pitch deck was used by Yammer to raise a $17,000,000 series D round from ex-Facebooker and “SPAC king” Chamath Palihapitiya. The deck dives right into how the modern workplace is developing and how Yammer addresses these concerns.
The original Yammer investor presentation devotes a couple of its 31 slides to accolades, awards, and user testimonials, and it contains a small bullet point about having already collected money from top-tier venture capitalists.
Yammer has raised a total of $142M in investment over 6 rounds. Their most recent fundraising came in the form of a Series E round on February 29, 2012.
Current valuation: $1.2B
Amount Raised: $17M
Round: Series D
YouTube
YouTube’s $3.5 million Series A fundraising round was led by Sequoia Capital. Miles Grimshaw of Thrive Capital shared the deck, which includes Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha’s investment note. According to the pitch deck, the online video platform had fewer than 10,000 users and 100,000 video views per day, but it was rapidly growing.
Notably, YouTube received $83.5 million in investment in just two rounds. Their final round of funding came from a Series B round on March 30, 2006. Just a few months later, Google purchased YouTube for a hefty sum of $1.65 billion.
Valuation at acquisition: $1.7B
Amount Raised: $3.5M
Round: Series A
How-to create your own pitch deck
We hope you learned something from the pitch decks of these successful startups, and that you are able to use these insights for your own business. If you’d like to, you can bookmark these pitch decks at bestpitchdeck.com
Although it probably goes without saying that having a successful business (outside just their pitch deck) was integral to their success, it is critical for any startup to ensure your vision is portrayed properly. That’s where crafting the perfect pitch deck comes essential:
You might find our other resources on how-to create a pitch deck helpful, or benefit from using one of our expert-designed templates:
Our team has helped create decks that have closed over $100M+ in deals & funding for leading startups and even VC firms. You can leverage this experience and get a jumpstart on your pitch with one of our easy-to-use presentation templates, one-pagers, or financial models.
Creating a deck? Check out our pitch deck templates.
Every pitch requires a unique approach tailored to its audience. Our team of experts has created pitch decks for different industries, as well as funding stages:
Silicon – Pitch Deck Template — You might be interested in the popular Silicon Pitch Deck designed by our team of experts at VIP.graphics: cutting-edge slides based on decks that closed millions in deals & funding.
Accelerator Pitch Deck Template — The Accelerator Pitch Deck template was crafted for early-stage founders seeking to win funding &/or investment from pitch contests, accelerators, incubators, and angels or VC firms. Winning a pitch contest or being accepted to a prominent accelerator program requires a unique strategic approach to an investor pitch presentation.
Series A Pitch Deck Template — A pitch deck template for startups and founders raising funding: Smart, actionable slides that work. This is a pitch deck template built specifically for startups, entrepreneurs and founders raising their first seed or Series A round of institutional capital.
Mergers & Acquisitions Pitch Deck Template — Perfect Pitch Deck™ is a template crafted for later-stage businesses entering more sophisticated discussions such as mergers & acquisitions (M&A), late-stage investment (Series C+), or other partnerships & financing opportunities. Our team of experts created this presentation to empower founders to present with confidence to investment banks, private equity (PE) groups, and/or hedge funds (and vice versa).
Alternatively, feel free to browse our growing selection of pitch decks tailored for specific industries and businesses.