Business Model, Financials & The Ask
The back half of a pitch deck — Business Model, Financials, and the Ask — is where dreamers separate from operators. Investors look here for evidence that you understand the unit economics, can articulate the path to scale, and know exactly what you need from them.
AI is excellent at structuring these slides — but only if you bring real numbers. AI cannot invent your gross margin. It can help you present it clearly, defend it, and stress-test it.
What You'll Learn
- How to write a Business Model slide that names price, packaging, and unit economics
- The minimum financial projections investors expect, and how to build them with AI help
- The Ask slide formula: amount, use of funds, milestones, runway
- A red-team prompt that simulates a tough VC partner meeting
The Business Model Slide
A weak business model slide says: "We charge a subscription fee."
A strong business model slide says: "Annual SaaS, billed up-front. ACV $48K for SMB and $180K for mid-market. Gross margin 82 percent. Average contract length 24 months. Payback period 11 months."
Five sentences. Every number is a load-bearing question an investor will ask.
The Business Model Prompt
Help me draft the Business Model slide for a pitch deck. Inputs:
- Pricing model: [subscription / usage-based / transaction / hybrid]
- Average contract value: [number, by segment if relevant]
- Gross margin: [number]
- Sales motion: [product-led / inside sales / enterprise field sales]
- Average payback period: [months]
- Net dollar retention (if applicable): [number]
Output:
- A 1-sentence summary of the business model
- A 4-row structured table: pricing, ACV by segment, gross margin, payback
- The most likely 3 investor questions on this slide and how to handle each
If you do not know one of these numbers, that is a different problem and AI cannot solve it for you. Go figure out the number. Investors will ask.
The Financials Slide
For seed and Series A, investors typically expect a 3-year forward projection showing:
- Revenue (split by segment if you have segments)
- Gross profit and gross margin percentage
- Headcount by function (sales, engineering, G&A)
- Burn / EBITDA
- Cash runway at current and post-raise burn
The Financial Projection Prompt
Build a 3-year financial projection for my pitch deck. Inputs:
- Current ARR: [number]
- Current monthly net new ARR: [number]
- Current gross margin: [number]
- Current burn: [monthly number]
- Anticipated round size: [number]
- Planned hiring: [list new hires by quarter, if known]
Output a year-by-year forecast in this table format:
Metric Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Revenue Gross profit Total headcount Annual burn Cash at year end Use a baseline scenario and explicitly state the growth assumptions for each line. Then suggest a 1-sentence headline for the slide that captures the trajectory.
A useful follow-up:
Now stress-test the model: what happens to Year 3 revenue and cash if new ARR growth slows by 40 percent? Output the same table for that scenario. This becomes the "downside case" footnote on the slide.
Showing a downside case (without making it the headline) signals operational maturity. Investors love this.
The Ask Slide
The Ask slide is the most important slide in any pitch deck and almost everyone gets it wrong. Wrong looks like: "We are raising $5M."
Right looks like a four-part structure:
- Amount and round type — e.g., "Raising $5M Series A"
- Use of funds — typically 60% engineering, 30% go-to-market, 10% G&A; vary by stage
- Milestones this round gets us to — what we will have proven 18-24 months from now
- Runway implication — how many months of runway this provides at planned burn
The Ask Slide Prompt
Generate the Ask slide for my pitch deck. Inputs:
- Round size and type: [e.g., $5M Series A]
- Current monthly burn after raise: [number]
- Target milestones for next round: [list 3-5 — e.g., $3M ARR, NDR > 115%, 2 paid enterprise design partners]
- Hiring plan: [summary]
Output:
- Headline: "We are raising [X] to [2-3 word objective]."
- Use of funds: 3-4 categories with percentages, each with a 1-line justification
- Milestones for the next 18-24 months: 3-5 specific, measurable targets
- Runway: months at planned burn, and the trigger event for the next round
Notice the headline pattern: "raising X to [objective]." Not "raising X." The objective is the load-bearing part.
The Red-Team Prompt: Simulating a Partner Meeting
After your back-half slides are drafted, run this prompt. It is the single highest-value test in this whole course.
You are playing the role of three partners at a top-tier Series A VC: a generalist, a finance-focused operator, and a vertical specialist in [your space].
Below are my Business Model, Financials, and Ask slides:
[paste all three]
Conduct a 30-minute partner meeting simulation. Each partner asks 3 hard questions about these slides — pricing logic, margin assumptions, growth projections, hiring plan, and the milestones tied to the Ask. Be skeptical and specific. After all 9 questions, give a "would-fund / would-pass" verdict and the 3 things that would change the verdict from pass to fund.
Run this before every actual VC meeting. Most founders never simulate the hard questions until they are in the meeting. AI lets you simulate cheaply. Most of the questions AI generates here are exactly the questions you will get from real partners.
Common Mistakes AI Will Make on These Slides
A few specific things to watch:
Hockey-stick projections that are not believable. AI sometimes outputs aggressive growth curves to please you. Always pair the baseline with a downside scenario.
Round size with no link to milestones. AI will name a round number without tying it to what gets proven. Always specify milestones in the prompt and check the output reflects them.
Use of funds at exactly 50/30/20. AI defaults to round numbers. If your real allocation is 64% engineering / 27% sales / 9% G&A, say so — round numbers signal a guessed allocation.
Generic "use of funds: hiring, sales, and marketing." Make AI specific: "Use of funds: 4 senior engineering hires ($1.6M loaded), 2 enterprise AEs ($700K), brand investment ($300K)."
Putting It All Together
A complete back-half of a pitch deck — Business Model, Financials, Ask — typically takes a founder a full day to draft from scratch. With these prompts and inputs ready in advance, you can produce a strong v1 in 45 to 60 minutes. The work that remains is verifying every number is accurate and defensible, which AI cannot do for you.
Key Takeaways
- Business Model slides need price, ACV, gross margin, sales motion, payback — five load-bearing numbers
- Financial projections should show a baseline plus a downside scenario; downside cases signal maturity
- Ask slides follow a four-part structure: amount, use of funds, milestones, runway implication
- The Ask headline is "raising X to [objective]" — never just "raising X"
- Always run the simulated VC partner-meeting prompt before any real investor meeting
- AI cannot invent your numbers — but it can structure, stress-test, and present them at investor-grade quality