The Best Pitch Deck I’ve Ever Seen

A little while ago, we announced that Extantia would be partnering with Modern Synthesis, the textile pioneers working on transforming nanocellulose — a natural fermentation-derived fibre — into durable, high quality alternatives to animal leather, ‘vegan’ leather, and plastic-based coated textiles.

We definitely believe that their product is going to blow people away, but Jen Keane and Ben Reeve didn’t just develop a great product, they also developed the best pitch deck I have ever seen. It was a pitch deck so compelling that even though we didn’t invest at the time, I remembered their company and we ended up investing three years later. I broke down why their pitch deck was so powerful into six key lessons — and asked Jen to weigh in with her firsthand perspective on them.

The first two lessons can be learned right from the story above:

Lesson 1: A great pitch deck won’t guarantee you an investment, but it will make you stand out and be remembered.

Lesson 2: A NO today doesn’t mean a NO tomorrow. Keep the relationship for future rounds.

A great pitch deck must grab investors’ attention and cut through the noise — and it’s a lot of noise. Investors review thousands of decks each year, and their attention spans are shrinking. A decade ago, you had almost four minutes; now, you have about two. You have to make them count.

Now, there are a lot of articles about how to make great decks. I happen to have written one. So I won’t repeat the obvious about storytelling and the theories about the hero’s journey…etc.

Instead, let’s focus on what made Modern Synthesis really unique. Here’s what I found particularly appealing in their deck.

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It is not enough to have a compelling story. To be remembered, your pitch deck has to have good design as well, and the two have to come together and speak with each other. The real art of any presentation is to balance content and design. That’s a lot to ask for, but Modern Synthesis’s pitch deck rises to the challenge.

The deck uses a clear and consistent visual theme that is present on every slide, so that each slide looks like it belongs to the same presentation. They’ve put a lot of effort into their corporate design. The slides feel unique and fresh, without using the same fonts, colours, and graphics that we’ve all seen a thousand times before, and on nearly every side, the pitch deck tells the same, consistent story, using strong supporting data.

Throughout the deck, Jen and Ben show that not only is their product unique, their production method works, and they have a good plan in place for getting where they need to go. The pitch deck makes it clear that their product has a real chance of being successful.

It probably won’t surprise you then that Jen is a designer by training.

💡 Here is Jen’s take on this:

“As a designer stepping into the world of entrepreneurship, designing that first pitch deck taught me a lot about what really happens when you get into a room of investors. Pitching can be intimidating but as Yair points out, it’s humans talking to humans. We knew that our 2021 pitch deck had to be an embodiment of our vision as a pre-seed company. How do you do that in 10 slides? For me, it comes down to two key elements: vision and trust. First, using visual design to immediately clarify the vision of our technology, making it tangible and relatable. This clarity is crucial for the second point, building trust. You’re trying to convince very time-poor investors that your team is the bet worth taking to bring that vision to life. We were intentional about every design choice to signal our ability to execute. One of our company values at Modern Synthesis is “By design”. That was crucial in 2021, and it still drives how we operate today.”

That intentionality behind every visual choice not only helped craft a compelling story but also became a strategic advantage in the room. It’s a great setup for what we’ll call Lesson 3a.

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Lesson 3a: Have a designer as a co-founder

Seriously. Ben & Enrique at Designer Fund actually only back companies that were started by designers (think Stripe, Gusto) as they believe those ultimately have better results. This is because good design isn’t just about making things look pretty. Good design affects how people interact with your product, and it can help you be remembered.

That said, it isn’t just designers that have something to bring to the table. Generally, I think that most ex-marketing people make great leaders. For example, check out Gong.io, whose CEO Amit was previously a CMO.

But what if you’re not a marketing guru?

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Lesson 3b: Your first hire should be a marketing person

Using Images

Let’s take another look back at Ben and Jen. If you flip through the slides you will see there are a lot of images that show the product. Their product is complex and thus the photos are crucial not just to catch the eye of the investor but also to help the investor understand the product and what it actually looks like. And that leads us to Lesson 4.

Lesson 4: Use images or photos to help investors picture your product, especially if you are a hardware company

Of course, don’t forget that the photos you show have to be relevant to the story of your pitch deck. It can be tempting to throw every photo you have on a slide, but using photos carelessly can have the opposite effect, making your slides seem chaotic and overwhelming (and NEVER EVER use cheap stock photos). Ben and Jen do a great job of never including more information than is absolutely necessary to tell their story. This helps the viewer stay engaged, and makes sure that they remember the key points.

💡 Jen’s take:

“When you say “bacteria” and “shoes” in the same sentence, you’re sparking a huge range of often disconnected ideas in someone’s mind. What we’re doing at Modern Synthesis is really cutting-edge, pushing boundaries in ways that can be hard to describe in a single sentence. An image, on the other hand, can be a powerful way to cut through the complexity. Our visual thread runs all the way back to the very first prototype of our technology — the “This is Grown” shoe. As an artefact, it did a lot of heavy lifting in showing how a fairly complex and completely novel concept could be applied to a very established industry. That’s what design does: it conveys progress in a way that speaks to our emotions. By grounding our technology in a clear, visual representation — like that first shoe — we were building a shared understanding of its transformative potential. And with that clarity, the company we’re building becomes much easier for investors to envision.”

By the way, photos are not only important at the seed stage. I encourage all companies that build facilities to create a 3D rendering of the plant. This helps investors to understand your plans and to give them confidence that you actually have one.

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Leveraging Font and colour

Another important element in the deck is the usage of colour to highlight what matters most. Take slide 18 (financials) as an example. Here, the revenue figures are highlighted in yellow, the same colour that has been used to highlight important information throughout the pitch deck. This immediately draws the reader’s eye, telling them that the highlighted figures are worth their attention.

Don’t forget, the reader doesn’t know you or your company as well as you do. The meaning and intent behind your slide might be obvious to you, but it won’t be obvious to them. If you present information to them without guidance, it’s likely you’ll overwhelm your reader. That means it’s important to guide your reader’s eyes to what really matters.

Here, the principles of good design can help you. Use colour and font size to direct your reader’s attention, and be consistent. If you start off using yellow as a highlighting colour in your early slides, don’t suddenly switch to blue in later slides (you’d be surprised by the chaos that we sometimes receive…).

Jen and Ben’s slides are comfortable to read because the information is laid out intuitively, following the path that a reader’s eye would normally take. It’s clear that a lot of care has been taken to consider the way a viewer would interact with each slide, and the result speaks for itself.

That brings us to Lesson 5.

Lesson 5: Use colour and font size to guide investors in each slide to what really matters

Be direct

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Last but not least, take a look at slides 21 and 22. It’s very clear how much money they want to raise and what they are going to achieve with it. For me as an investor, this is exactly the information I need in order to decide whether a product fits my sweet spot. And that leads us to Lesson 6.

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Lesson 6: Articulate your ask very clearly

You don’t ever want to be vague about what you need to be successful. Investors shouldn’t reach the end of your pitch feeling like they have to guess what you want. Not only do you want your investors to feel like they know how much you are asking them for, you also want to make sure they feel like you know exactly what you need. Your investors need to feel like you have a plan, so that they can feel more confident in saying yes, making your pitch deck more likely to succeed.

💡Jen’s take:

“Pitching is a two-way conversation about the future you’re building. Don’t be afraid to be direct about what you need to get there. We spent considerable time honing our ask, understanding precisely what resources were required to fuel our vision. It also helps to remember that this isn’t a one-shot deal — it’s a long game of building trust over time. Three years passed between our first pitch to Extantia and their investment. For us, having a clear plan from the outset was fundamental. Looking back at our initial pitch in 2021, it’s remarkable how much of that original vision we’ve executed on. Of course, the journey hasn’t followed the path we set out on to the letter, as innovation rarely does. But that core ambition remains. Now, as Modern Synthesis evolves and we move towards commercialisation, our focus is on demonstrating customer traction and the tangible interest we’re seeing from the industry. We’ve strategically shifted our scaling path to meet this moment. If you’re intrigued to see what the next chapter of our journey looks like and how we’re turning that initial vision into reality, we’d welcome you to reach out.”

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Note to readers: This pitch deck was originally created in 2021 and has been redacted for sharing. You can see the pitch deck here. Please understand that Modern Synthesisʼ technology, product applications, and brand identity have evolved since this first version was presented. For the latest, visit www.modernsynthesis.com.

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