About this design
Where the Sequoia Pitch Deck style comes from, and what it signals.
Sequoia Capital publishes a short guide called Writing a Business Plan. It lists ten sections in a fixed order: company purpose, problem, solution, why now, market potential, competition, business model, team, financials and vision. Founders have copied that order into their seed decks for over a decade. This theme turns the outline into the design. It is an unofficial homage and uses no Sequoia logo or wordmark.
A strip of ten cells runs along the bottom of every slide. You see the current section in green #4fb946, the finished sections in black and the rest in pale gray #f3f5f2, so the room always knows how far through the story you are. Each slide opens with Sequoia's question in small gray type and answers it in one bold Work Sans sentence. Green stays a fill color: text is black or gray.
Pick it for a first institutional round, when investors expect the familiar order and you want the structure visible. The dashed forecast bars on the financials slide keep plan and actuals apart, and the comparison table puts doing nothing next to your real competitors.
Use it for
- Seed and Series A pitch decks that follow the Sequoia outline section by section
- Accelerator and demo day applications that ask for the classic ten-slide structure
- Founders writing their first deck who want the order to guide the content
- Investor updates that walk the same ten sections quarter after quarter
- Business plan reviews in classrooms and startup programs
Skip it for
- A later-stage raise led by dense financial analysis; Term Sheet gives the numbers more room
- Consumer brands that want warmth and photography; Airbnb Pitch Deck or Hearth fit that tone
- A three-minute stage pitch with one idea per slide; Demo Day is built for the clock
The presentation design prompt
This is the exact text that gets sent to your AI.
Create a presentation in the 'Sequoia Pitch Deck' theme, an unofficial homage to the ten-part business plan outline Sequoia Capital publishes for founders. The deck follows that outline in order, 1 Company purpose, 2 Problem, 3 Solution, 4 Why now, 5 Market potential, 6 Competition and alternatives, 7 Business model, 8 Team, 9 Financials, 10 Vision. Background: white (#ffffff) on every slide. Typography: 'Work Sans' (Google Fonts) throughout; headlines 700 at 32 to 36px, the cover sentence 700 at 48 to 54px, body 400 at 14 to 18px in #2b2b2b, supporting text #6b6f69, tabular numbers. Text is black #000000 or those grays, never green. Green #4fb946 is a fill color only, in at most two places per slide: the active strip cell and the one bar or row that proves the headline; its tint #e5f4e3 marks the company's row in tables. The signature is the outline strip: a full-width row of ten equal cells, 30px tall with 2px white gaps, at the bottom of every slide, each cell showing number and short section name at 10px: current section #4fb946 with black text, finished sections black with white text, upcoming #f3f5f2 with #6b6f69 text. Above it, an 11px gray line: company and round left, 'n / 10' right. Content slides open with Sequoia's question for that section in 18px #6b6f69 regular (for example 'Why now?'), then a bold black one-sentence headline that answers it, left-aligned, two lines at most. Cover: company name top-left, round and date top-right, a 72px by 6px green rule, the company purpose as one declarative sentence under 20 words, founder name and email. Why now: three dated shifts in columns, each a big year, a bold statement and one line of evidence under a 2px black rule, the latest rule green. Market potential: bottom-up horizontal bars from total market to reachable market, value at each bar end, the reachable-market bar green, a source line. Competition: a comparison table with alternatives as rows (include 'doing nothing'), criteria as columns, filled dots for yes and short gray dashes for no; the company row tinted #e5f4e3 with green dots. Financials: quarterly bars, actuals solid black, the latest quarter green, forecasts as dashed black outlines, values above bars, plus a side column of three figures (revenue, burn, runway). Vision: the five-year outcome as the headline and three dated milestones on hairline #dfe3dd rules. Strictly avoid: skipping or reordering the ten sections, green text, green in more than two places per slide, gradients, drop shadows, rounded cards, stock photos, icons, emoji, dark backgrounds, bullet walls, centered body text, topic-only headlines like 'Market', TAM/SAM/SOM circles, the Sequoia tree logo or wordmark, and claiming affiliation with Sequoia Capital. Use this theme for my slides. Ask me what the presentation is about first, then apply the theme to every slide.View this prompt and its data on GitHub
How to use this prompt
From copied text to a finished Sequoia Pitch Deck deck in four moves.
- 01
Copy the prompt
Use the copy button, or open it pre-filled in Claude or ChatGPT with one click from the panel on this page.
- 02
Tell the AI your topic
The prompt instructs the AI to ask what your presentation is about first. A sentence or a pasted outline is enough.
- 03
Generate and iterate
Ask for more slides or swap a layout. The avoid list at the end of the prompt keeps Sequoia Pitch Deck on-style while the content changes.
- 04
Or skip straight to a deck
SlideSpeak turns your topic or document into a finished Sequoia Pitch Deck presentation, exportable as PowerPoint or PDF.
Common questions
Working with the Sequoia Pitch Deck presentation design prompt in practice.
