Presentation and Pitch Deck Prompts for Business

Most presentations fail before the first slide. The structure is wrong, the audience is wrong, and the opening is a CV instead of a hook. AI cannot stand up and deliver for you — but it can give you a slide-by-slide outline so good that the rest is just rehearsal.

1. Introduction

Whether it is an internal QBR, a sales pitch, or a Series A deck, every business presentation is built on the same skeleton: who you are, what you do, why now, what changes if the audience says yes, and what you are asking for. The order changes, the emphasis changes, the language changes — but the skeleton is always there. AI is excellent at producing a strong first draft of that skeleton, slide by slide, in plain language.

The trick is prompting for outlines, not finished slides. You want clean slide titles, one-line key messages, and the kind of supporting evidence each slide needs. Visual design and final wording stay with you.

2. The Concept Explained

A presentation prompt needs five ingredients on top of the standard four: the audience (investors, leadership, a sales prospect), the time available (5, 15, 30 minutes), the single takeaway you want them to remember, the level of existing context they have, and the action you are asking for at the end. Skip the takeaway and the deck becomes a list of facts. Skip the ask and nobody knows what to do next.

Two patterns: storytelling deck vs. analytical deck

A storytelling deck — investor pitches, vision keynotes — builds tension and pays it off. Problem → why now → our insight → product → traction → ask. An analytical deck — board reviews, strategy proposals — leads with the recommendation and defends it. Recommendation → context → options → evidence → risks → next steps. Tell the AI which pattern you want and the slide order falls into place.

One message per slide

The single biggest improvement you can make to any deck is the one-message-per-slide rule. The slide title is the message ("Q3 revenue grew 28% despite a smaller marketing budget"), not the topic ("Q3 Results"). Ask the AI to write titles in full-sentence form and your slides instantly become more communicative.

3. The Problem Without This Technique

create a pitch deck for my startup

4. The Solution

Act as a senior pitch-deck coach who has read 500
seed-stage decks.

Company: Acuity Labs, an AI tool that helps Indian
chartered accountants automate routine GST and TDS
filings. 14 months old. Three founders (one CA, two
engineers). Currently used by 90 firms in pilot. Average
firm saves 14 hours per week.

Audience: a Series Seed investor at an India-focused
fund. They have already seen our exec summary and have
allocated 25 minutes for the meeting.

Single takeaway we want them to remember: "Acuity is
the workflow layer for India's 250,000 small CA firms —
and we have already locked in distribution through
two state CA associations."

Ask: a meeting with their senior partner within two
weeks.

Structure the deck as a storytelling pattern (Problem
→ Why Now → Insight → Product → Traction → Team → Ask).
Aim for 12 slides max.

For each slide, give me:
- Slide number
- Slide title written as a full-sentence message
  (e.g. "Small CA firms lose 14 hours a week to manual
  filing", not "The Problem")
- One-line key message
- Three supporting bullets we would say out loud
- A note on the visual we should use (chart, screenshot,
  quote, diagram, photo — be specific)

Tone: confident, specific, no buzzwords. Do not invent
numbers we have not given you; if a slide needs evidence
we have not supplied, write "[need data — owner: founder]".

5. Step-by-Step Breakdown

1. Name your audience precisely. "An India-focused seed VC who has read the exec summary" is far more useful than "investors".
2. Lock in the single takeaway. One sentence the audience must remember after lunch. If you cannot write it, the deck has no point yet.
3. Pick the pattern. Storytelling for pitches; analytical for board reviews. Mixing the two kills momentum.
4. Demand full-sentence slide titles. "Q3 revenue grew 28%" not "Q3 Results". The title carries the meaning; the body slide carries the evidence.
5. Ask for a visual note per slide. A chart, a screenshot, a photo, a quote, a diagram. This stops you defaulting to bullet-only slides during the design pass.
6. Forbid invented data. "If a slide needs evidence we have not supplied, write [need data]." Decks are too high-stakes for hallucinated numbers.

Tip: Ask the AI for two slide-1 hook options after the main outline. One emotional, one analytical. Pick whichever fits your audience's mood — the first 30 seconds carry disproportionate weight.

6. Practice Exercises

7. Key Takeaways