Pitch Deck

One deck, two audiences

Your deck is read twice: silently by evaluators alongside your Lock 3 submission, and aloud by you at the physical final if selected. Build for silent reading first — every slide must make its point without narration — then rehearse the spoken version, which will skip and compress.

The narrative spine

• The person and the problem (with your field evidence)
• Why now, and why existing options fail them
• The solution: core loop, shown as screens not adjectives
• The AI, honestly: what it does, what it scores, where it is unsure
• Proof: metrics from your pilot, limitations included
• The journey: what changed across the three locks
• What comes next: realistic continuation, not fantasy scale

Evidence density beats slide count

Ten slides that each carry one verifiable fact outperform thirty of vision statements. Screenshots of the real product, a real user quote from your pilot (with consent), your actual accuracy table, your actual before/after metric — these are the slides juries remember. Avoid: stock imagery, buzzword walls, market-size slides copied from reports you have not read.

Finals-day practicality

• Assume a bright room and a weak projector: dark text on light slides, 24pt minimum
• Carry the deck as PDF on two devices plus a drive
• Rehearse the timed version twice with a hard stop
• Prepare for the three certain questions: why this problem, why AI, what breaks first at scale