Pitch Deck vs Application Form: What Your Deck Cannot Answer

The pitch deck is the document most founders finish first, so it is tempting to treat it as the application. It is not. We sorted 252 questions from the application forms of 32 accelerators, venture funds and investment programmes by what a founder needs in order to answer each one. This is what a deck covers, and what it leaves you to write.

Read this first. We read each question and sorted it ourselves. When a question could go either way, such as "describe your traction", we counted it as something a deck answers, so the 29% is more likely too low than too high. A deck answers a question only if it has the slide, and many do not: in our read of 178 founder decks, 139 left at least one of an investor's eight questions unanswered. The method is at the end.

Where the 252 questions fall

Forms vary a great deal. The shortest has one question and the longest 35, and the typical one has six. Nine of the 32 ask nothing outside a deck's reach. Twelve have a third or more of their questions outside it.

What your deck already answers

The questions a deck covers are the same few, asked by most forms. This is how many of the 32 forms ask each one, and the slide that holds the answer.

Two things in that chart are worth acting on. First, the ask slide matters least here. Only 3 of the 32 forms ask how much you are raising or what you will spend it on, probably because an accelerator usually sets the amount itself. Second, the short answers are short. Six forms cap the one-line description at 20 to 30 words: Launch Africa and Microtraction at 20, a16z speedrun and Cascador at 25, Pear VC and Seedstars at 30. Across all the forms, 15 of 32 set a word limit on at least one question, and the median limit is 100 words. Slide text is not form text. Write each description to the limit, not the other way round.

What your deck cannot answer

The 29% falls into four kinds of question. Each one calls for something you can prepare once and reuse.

1. Exact figures and records (31 questions, 13 forms)

A deck shows a revenue chart. A form asks for the number. Eleven of the 32 forms ask for an actual revenue figure, often by period: the Baobab Network form asks for revenue and for paying customers over the last 3, 6 and 12 months. Seven ask about funding raised, the cap table, a valuation or investors, and Baobab goes as far as the terms of any debt or convertible notes. Three ask for burn rate or runway: Google for Startups Accelerator Africa, Launch Africa VC and Britam Digital.

Prepare a one-page numbers sheet. Revenue and recurring revenue by month for the last 12 months. Customers and paying customers now and at 3, 6 and 12 months. Monthly burn, cash in the bank and runway in months. Every funding round, with date, amount, source and instrument. A cap table summary and the terms of any debt. Several forms ask for figures in US dollars, so convert once and note the rate you used.

2. About the founders (21 questions, 8 forms)

Four forms ask how the founders met or know each other, and four ask whether each founder works full time and since when. Y Combinator's form asks how long each of you has worked on the company and where you live now and would be based. Baobab asks four personal questions, about unique skills, hobbies, quirky experiences and childhood interests. Others ask why you started, or about any accelerator you have already joined. None of this is in a deck.

Prepare a one-page founder story sheet. For each founder: role, the date they started on this, whether they are full time and since when, and a LinkedIn link. Then how you met, why this problem, any programme you have been through, where you are based, and two or three facts about you that are not on a CV. Write it once. Most of the personal questions are variations of the same few facts.

3. About the programme (10 questions, 9 forms)

Why do you want this programme, what do you hope to gain, what would you work on while you are in it. Nothing in your deck can answer that, and the same paragraph pasted into nine applications reads like it.

Write three sentences per programme. Name the specific thing you would use, such as a market it opens, an investor group or a mentor network, and one milestone it would help you reach. This is the one answer you cannot prepare in advance for all forms at once.

4. Profile facts and links (12 questions, 9 forms)

A LinkedIn profile for every founder, a demo or prototype link, a link to a recorded pitch (the Fuzé form wants a public or unlisted video), your stage, your sector and the countries you operate in.

Keep one list of these. Open each link in a private window before you submit, because a link that asks for a login is the same as no link.

One prize in our set is different again. Africa's Business Heroes asks mostly for contact details, an ID upload, a business licence and social handles: 23 fields, almost none of them narrative. We left it out of the percentages.

Before you apply: a checklist

1. Read the form first. Copy every question into a document before you write a word.
2. Mark each question. Slide, numbers sheet, founder sheet, programme-specific or link.
3. Write the one-liner to the limit. Twenty words fits every cap we found.
4. Fill the numbers sheet. It is the part founders most often have to stop and go and find.
5. Write the founder sheet once. Reuse it on every form.
6. Write the programme answer fresh each time. Three sentences, specific to them.
7. Test every link in a private window.

If a question needs a slide you do not have, that is worth knowing before the deadline. Our guide to creating a pitch deck, slide by slide covers what each slide has to say.

Applying for a grant or a competition instead?

We have not analysed grant or competition forms this way, so we are not making claims about them here. When we looked for guidance on pitch decks for grants, most of what we found came from companies that sell deck services. We would trust the funder's own guidelines over any general advice, including ours. Look for how the application is scored, and for whether it wants a budget showing what the money will pay for, which a standard investor deck rarely has.

How we got these numbers, and what they cannot tell you

• What was counted. The questions on the application forms we hold for 32 programmes, as recorded in our application assistant in October 2026: 252 questions. Forms we built for individual clients are not included, and neither is the one prize described above.
• Forms change. We recorded each form at one point in time. A programme may have changed its questions since, and we have not re-checked each one.
• How the questions were sorted. One by one, by reading the text, into five groups by what the answer needs. Anything ambiguous went to the "a slide most decks have" group, so the share that needs more than a deck is, if anything, understated.
• Long forms weigh more. The Baobab Network form has 35 questions and counts for more of the 252 than a form with three. That is why we also give the number of forms that ask each question.
• Who is in the set. Accelerators, venture funds and investment programmes, mostly aimed at African startups with a few global ones. It is the set we hold, not a sample of all programmes, and it contains no grants.