The stories
Each story stands on its own. Read in order, they move from what a number measures, to what customers have done, to what to work on next.
The Number That Isn't Revenue
The biggest figure in a deck is often not money the company earned. Before you lead with a number, know what it measures, over what period, and how much of it is yours.
Read the story: The Number That Isn't RevenueThey Had Customers. Why Wasn't That Enough?
Having customers is a milestone, not a conclusion. A first payment shows that people will buy. Whether they stay, come back and cost less to win than they bring in is a separate question, and usually the next one.
Read the story: They Had Customers. Why Wasn't That Enough?What If the Deck Isn't the Problem?
A better deck can make a business easier to understand. It cannot make customers respond, pay or return. Before you rewrite the slides, find out whether the gap is in how you tell the story or in what the market has shown.
Read the story: What If the Deck Isn't the Problem?
How to read a story
Every story keeps three kinds of words apart, so you can always tell what a deck showed, what the report says and what is GTM Right's reading.
- GTM Right's reading
- The story's own prose, unmarked: how GTM Right reads the evidence and what it suggests you try. It is interpretation and guidance, not a statement by any company.
- From the deck
- What the public copy shows, as the report records it, with the slide it cites.
- In the report's words
- Quoted word for word from the research report, with a link to where the report says it.
- Your test
- One question and one action to take into your own business.
What a story is, and is not
An illustration, not a verdict. A story uses public decks the research discusses to illustrate a commercial question. It is not a judgement of any company, team or deck, it does not rate how well a deck pitches, and it says nothing about what later happened to any company or about any company's fundraising.
The library labels these presentations as associated with fundraising. That label does not confirm that any particular round closed or that the public deck was exactly what investors saw.
Selected cases. Historical illustration only, intentionally chosen, excluded from all headline sample percentages. Their deck content is not evidence that a later adverse company event occurred.
Figures as presented. Figures were transcribed from public slides and classified according to rules. They are presentation disclosures rather than company accounts.
Privately held evidence. Public decks may be shortened, updated, rewritten, redacted or different from what was shared privately. A missing revenue or retention figure is a statement about public disclosure, not proof that the company had no such information.
Causation. The counts are patterns, not causes. The study cannot show that a deck, or the activity behind it, caused a company to raise money, to continue or to reach any later result.
- Research method. AI-assisted methods were used to read and classify the publicly available presentations. The classifications were not independently second-coded. The research reports what published deck material disclosed, with source references and definitions provided.
How the research was doneEvidence definitionsSource index for cited decks