Deeptech Pitch Deck Template

1. Problem – Why Now?

Start with the big, painful, undeniable problem you’re solving. In deep tech, the pain is often technical rather than user experience .e.g.: inefficient drug discovery pipelines, slow and expensive diagnostics, outdated industrial processes, legacy chip architectures hitting physical limits, lack of satellite data bandwidth, or cybersecurity solutions that aren’t ready for the quantum leap.

The Why Now angle is crucial. What has changed that makes your solution possible today? Technology breakthroughs like quantum-safe encryption, engineered biomaterials, AI-driven drug discovery, or new nanomaterials. Regulatory shifts in areas like space commercialization, adaptive clinical trials, or medical device approvals. Hardware cost curves for sensors, compute, or advanced manufacturing. Market timing around infrastructure readiness, exploding data volumes etc.

Keep it crisp. Two to three bullets maximum, not a wall of text. Your problem should be undeniable and your timing should feel inevitable.

2. Solution – Your Sustainable Edge

Explain your tech simply without dumbing it down. Imagine you’re talking to a smart VC who isn’t a PhD in your field. Your solution needs to be accessible but not oversimplified.

Emphasize defensibility. What’s your “secret sauce”? Proprietary algorithms, special datasets, engineered molecules, or unique materials? Why can’t someone else easily replicate this? What gives you a sustainable competitive advantage?

Visuals beat words. A clear diagram works better than two dense paragraphs.

Show key performance metrics vs. alternatives – concrete improvements in speed, accuracy, cost, energy efficiency, or scalability.

3. Technology Deep Dive

Go one level deeper than the solution slide. This is your deep tech bonus slide – it separates you from typical startups.

Show what makes your technology fundamentally different and de-risks the science for investors. Cover proprietary IP: patents filed, granted, and planned. Include experimental validation like early benchmarks, lab results, and prototype performance. Explain scalability solutions and how you’ve solved constraints like manufacturing yields, bioprocess throughput, energy consumption, or training costs. Address technical risk mitigation – both the key assumptions validated and the remaining technical hurdles that you identified.

Don’t turn it into a research paper. Focus on what proves your technology works and can scale.

4. Market – Bottom-Up, Not Top-Down

Avoid the “McKinsey says TAM = $500B” trap. Most VCs (including us;)) are skeptical of generic market research for deep tech. Build bottoms-up market model that show you understand your actual customers.

Start with who pays. Identify specific verticals and customer profiles. Count how many customers or projects fit your ideal profile in them. Estimate how much they spend per year on comparable solutions, or extrapolate from your early pilots or letter of intents. Calculate what percentage you can realistically capture and when.

For markets with more complex dynamics, reflect the real-world purchasing flow. In sectors like medtech, biotech, or spacetech, this might mean considering reimbursement models, government contracts, or pharma partnerships. If relevant, split your analysis between the direct market (buyers) and the enabling market (players who benefit indirectly and may also pay).

Instead of “$X billion cybersecurity market,” show: 

4,000 enterprises in data-sensitive sectors (including ~150 telcos, ~1,800 banks, ~400 healthcare providers, and ~1,650 large enterprises working with government) in our key EU and US markets × €250K average annual budget for [what our solution does] × 20% realistically addressable = ~€100M SAM.

or

2,500 manufacturing facilities in the EU relying on high-precision chemical processes currently spend ~€500K annually on monitoring and quality control. Our solution reduces these costs to ~€120K while improving accuracy, making ~33% of the market realistically addressable = ~€100M SAM.

Finally, be realistic about adoption timelines. Deep tech solutions often move slower than SaaS – show adoption curves that reflect regulatory cycles, infrastructure readiness and your industry’s adoption habits of new technology.

5. Go To Market – Winning Your First Customers

In deep tech your strategy often looks somewhat different from typical software companies.

Typical deep tech GTM includes early pilots and proof-of-concepts. These pilots and proof-of-concepts are with lighthouse customers that will enable you convince others to buy. It also includes strategic co-development partnerships that provide funding and validation. You sell to technical buyers rather than procurement departments. It often also includes technical evangelism and thought leadership to build a market category and/or disrupt the market’s status quo.

The key question investors want answered is simple: How do you get from the lab to the factory to the market?

Show that you understand the full journey, including how long it will take to educate and convince customers, what regulatory approvals are needed and how they fit into your sales process, how you plan to scale internationally (e.g. build local partnerships), and whether you’ll leverage channels, OEMs, or system integrators to accelerate adoption. 

Finally, connect your GTM strategy to your fundraising round. Show how the capital you’re raising enables specific milestones e.g completing 3 customer pilots, securing regulatory clearance in one core market, and preparing for initial commercial deployments. This gives investors confidence that your GTM plan is not just ambitious but also tied to realistic, de-risked steps that set you up for your next raise – and in deep tech, you’ll almost certainly need one. Non-dilutive funding, such as the EIC Accelerator and Horizon Europe (EU), ESA programs, or NIH and SBIR grants (US), can also help bridge early milestones before significant revenues arrive and make your case even stronger.

6. Competition & Moat – Why You Will Win

Every deep tech startup has competitors, but they’re not always other startups. Sometimes your biggest competition is the status quo, e.g. existing workflows, “DIY” solutions, internal R&D, or manual processes. Show that you understand the landscape and where you fit within it.

A simple competition matrix works well: highlight your key differentiators (e.g. performance, cost, integration, IP protection) and compare against direct competitors, academic/research alternatives, “build internally” options, and the status quo.

Then, make it clear why you win not just today but sustainably. In deeptech, being “a bit better” isn’t enough – your solution must be dramatically better to justify switching costs and beat inertia. 

Finally, show how your IP strategy builds a defensible moat: granted and pending patents, trade secrets, proprietary datasets, regulatory advantages, network effects, or first-mover positioning. For example:“3 core patents granted, 5 pending, covering our (…) and exclusive access to a proprietary dataset of 10M+ samples.”

Pro tip: If you have a large patent portfolio, extensive trade secrets, or regulatory exclusivity, consider a dedicated appendix slide. Investors often want to dive deep here.

7. Business Model – How You Make Money

You need to present a scalable business model with clear economics. Investors want to understand how you make money and when you reach positive unit economics.

Explain your revenue model clearly – whether it’s hardware + SaaS, licensing, licensing fees, recurring consumables, or service contracts and show volume thresholds for profitability. Be upfront about what scales and what doesn’t: some costs drop with production, others don’t.

If you’re pre-revenue, present realistic unit economics projections. Show how BOM costs decrease with scale, outline manufacturing partnerships, and explain your working capital needs. Address potential supply chain risks, component availability, and your design-for-manufacturing strategy.

For medtech, biotech, or dual-use solutions, factor in regulatory-driven pricing models and licensing opportunities where relevant. The goal is to demonstrate a path from innovation to predictable revenue.

8. Traction –  Proof You’re Not Just a Research Project

Investors need confidence that your solution isn’t just a science experiment. In deep tech, technical milestones can matter just as much as commercial ones.

Show traction wherever you have it: signed pilots, proofs-of-concept, LOIs, early revenues, or lighthouse customer testimonials. Balance this with technical validation, e.g.: granted patents, pending applications, regulatory approvals, published results, strategic partnerships, or endorsements from credible third parties. Highlight how your IP strategy protects your core technology and creates defensibility against competitors.

Always quantify your progress. “Three signed pilots worth €250K ARR each” beats “strong customer interest.” “Clinical experiments on 54 patients completed with 92% accuracy” beats “promising results.”

If you don’t yet have customers, focus on validation milestones: successful prototypes, experimental results, filed patents, or partnerships with industry leaders. The goal is to show investors that you’re systematically de-risking the opportunity and building a defensible position.

9. Team – Why You

Deep tech companies need a rare mix of skills. Investors want to see that your team combines the scientific depth to invent breakthrough technology, the engineering capability to turn it into a product, and the commercial drive to bring it to market.

Show why your team is uniquely positioned to solve this problem. Include founder backgrounds, relevant achievements, and any previous startup or scale-up experience. If you have an advisory board, highlight members who add domain expertise, industry networks, or credibility.

If there are key hires missing, acknowledge them openly. Investors appreciate founders who understand where they still need to strengthen the team and have a plan to do it – it signals self-awareness and builds confidence around execution. 

10. The Ask – What This Round Unlocks

Show how the funds translate into concrete milestones, e.g.: completing key pilots and securing lighthouse customers, achieving regulatory approvals or certifications, scaling production, improving unit economics, or preparing for commercial rollout. Frame your ask around risk reduction:

“This round funds completion of pre-clinical validation and prepares us for first-in-human studies,” or “With this capital, we scale from lab prototypes to factory-ready systems for industrial rollout.”, or “This will enables us to start production at a capacity of up to 200 units per week to support early commercial deployments.”

Finally, show the path ahead. What comes after this round? Outline the next major milestones, your timeline to significant revenues or follow-on funding, and the key assumptions behind your plan. Keep the focus on what’s unlocked now, not distant future ambitions.

The Appendix: Essential Supporting Materials

Keep your main presentation to 10-12 slides, but prepare detailed appendix materials. These may be helpful when questions pop up during your pitch or for a deeper dive if the main pitch “sticks”:

• Pilot Case Studies – deep dives into PoCs or early customer results, showing impact and ROI.
• IP Portfolio Details – full patent list and landscape analysis
• Regulatory Pathway – detailed approval timeline and requirements
• Financial Model Details – unit economics, scenario analysis
• Current Cap Table – fully diluted ownership structure including ESOP
• Team Bios Extended – full backgrounds and achievements
• Competitive Analysis Extended – full matrix with technical specifications
• Technical Deep Dive – detailed technology explanation for technical investors

Final Thoughts

Follow Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule. It still applies to deep tech: ten slides, no more than twenty minutes, and no font smaller than thirty points. As Kawasaki puts it:

“Ten is the optimal number of slides because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting – and venture capitalists are very normal.”

If you need more than ten slides to explain your business, simplify your story.

Tell a story, don’t dump data. Investors fund conviction, not PDFs. Your pitch should flow logically from problem through solution to opportunity, with each slide building toward your ask.

Your appendix isn’t a trash bin. It’s a curated extension of your story. Include only materials that help investors dive deeper if they want to, such as detailed technical explanations, BOM tables, comprehensive IP filings, regulatory pathways, or financials.

Don’t fake it. If your IP is pending, say so. If BOM margins aren’t great yet, explain your plan to improve them. Honesty builds trust, and experienced investors will see through optimistic projections.

Think like an investor. We want to understand: What’s your defensible moat? How does this scale beyond the first few customers? When does science turn into predictable revenue?

Practice technical translation. The best deep tech founders can explain quantum-safe encryption or gene-editing therapies to a 12-year-old and then dive into PhD-level detail with technical advisors. Master both levels.

The most effective deep tech pitch decks tell the story of a breakthrough technology that meets a real market need and is delivered by a team that is uniquely positioned to execute it. Every slide should further this narrative, from describing the technical problem that requires a scientific solution, to outlining the specific milestones that your funding will unlock.

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